Stephen Shore's latest Aperture article

<p>Shore writes about trying to remove conscious or unconscious pictorial models from his photographs. He even argues that only painters/sketchers can compose; photographers structure an image. To consciously use perspective is adding "art sauce". You have to photograph what the scene speaks to you. His sample photographs are helpful in making his point.</p>

<p>I get a much better understanding of what Shore is trying to achieve in his "New Topography" photographs, but does his philosophy inherently limit comprehension by others? Amazon is full of books by Panofsky, Arnheim, and Gombrich on visual thinking, perspective as symbolic form, etc. Any comments on how they relate to Shore would be appreciated.</p>

 

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<p>You have to photograph what the scene speaks to you.</p>

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<p>No you don't. No one has to photograph any particular way. Shore is welcome to structure rather than compose, to avoid conscious use of perspective because he doesn't want to add whatever he means by "art sauce," and to photograph "what the scene speaks to [him]." Just as Avedon is welcome to, in his words, shoot photographs that "don't go below the surface" and Winogrand is welcome to make photographs "to find out what something will look like photographed."</p>

<p>No, it doesn't inherently limit comprehension by others. It's a way of seeing and a way he articulates his approach to making photos. Comprehending Shore isn't as important to me as looking at his photos. Many photographers and artists have less than stellar ways of expressing themselves about their art. As a matter of fact, there are probably critics, viewers, and historians who may comprehend Shore's art better even than he does, which is why he makes the stuff and others study it in context and from the standpoint of its relationship to history, etc.</p>

<p>I would like to address what he says in the article, but can't find a link to it and don't subscribe to the magazine, so it's hard to discuss adequately what he says, other than to react to how you've characterized and very briefly summarized it. If you have a way of sharing the article with us, I'd love to read it and respond to what I'm sure is a thoughtful essay.</p>

<p>_________________________</p>

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<p>. . . [D]oes his philosophy inherently limit comprehension by others?</p>

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<p>Are you talking about his philosophy limiting the comprehension of that philosophy itself (in other words, does his philosophy defy comprehension?) or his philosophy limiting the comprehension of his photos? Photos don't necessarily have to be comprehended, though many can be and are better for it. Appreciation doesn't have to be accompanied by meaning or interpretation. Many visual and musical artists express themselves in such a way as to defy comprehension, almost purposefully. Their statements serve their works and are as often as not ambiguous by design, because words simply fail the task.</p>

<p>I didn't read Shore's article in the same way at all. His use of "art sauce" was more in relationship to form as it relates to content, that it shouldn't be self conscious but rather reveal the content intended. Perspective might be somewhat related, but I think it is a totally different issue. In fact, IMO, his redux to reduce formal structure(form) revealed a much more a personal perspective and idea (content) than the original. The idea that the New Topographics movement was objective photography has been pretty well debunked over the years. It carried a very strong sense of individual perspective.</p>

<p>I don't take any particular issue with Shore's words but the article could be seen as a thinly veiled advertisement for his new $8500 portfolio that includes only these two images--the actual ad for this is actually on the 3rd page of the magazine (maybe even his payment for the article).</p>

<p>I like a lot of what Shore writes in general, it makes one stop and consider things in new or different ways--or at least casts things in new ways. His idea of structure is one such idea he has tossed out that makes us re-evaluate how we think about making images. While it suggests that we have no control on one level, it also suggests that we have a great deal of control other than just focal length and exposure. A painter stands in one place to control his image, we can move and choose.</p>

<p>I personally do not enjoy (understand?) New Topographic, Becher, etc. photography and feel that I may be overlooking something useful to my own development as a photographer.</p>

<p>For copyright reasons, I can't reproduce Shore's well written article, however, his decision that an apparently banal and unremarkable photo was preferable to his prior composed photo indicates to me that he comprehended something which I cannot. Thus my question if Shore represents (perhaps inadvertently) late 20th century theoretical discussions of the image in art.</p>

<p>PS: I know it's OK not to like something</p>

<p>While I have a number of Shore's books, I haven't read much of his writing, so the following is a guess at best. But what I think he might be trying to get at is the carrying forward of practices that are needed in the previous material to the current material where those practices are not required. For example, in the stone columns of classical Greek architechture, there are carved into the stone, features that were needed when wood was used but which were totally unneccessary when using stone. Likewise as bridge builders moved from stone to iron to steel, often design practices were carried forward that were entirely unnecessary in the new material.</p>

<p>Shore seems to me to possibly be wanting us to at least notice that our material is (mainly) light -- it's not paint. Which means that the painter's detour through the mind, and the constructive effort needed to get something out the hand and onto a canvas is not necessary to the "material" of photography.</p>

<p>In a book (that I happen to be looking at this morning), <em>Exactitude: Hyperrealist Art Today</em>, which is a book of photorealistic painting, the introduction includes this sentence, talking about one of the artists in the book:</p>

 

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<p>"He added line and mark to the language of photography, which is a dull surface of homogenised coloured dots."</p>

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<p>"Coloured dots" are yukky; line and mark are great. I think perhaps Shore would reverse that claim -- not because this is a competition between painting and photography, but because he embraces his different medium -- the coloured dots, the light.</p>

<p>Again, not having read Shore I can't discuss this from the standpoint of his take on the matter, but what Julie has written (which may well be what Shore meant) is very thought-provoking on a number of levels. </p>

<p>Having been thinking about Stieglitz lately, there seems to be a similarity in terms of wanting to assert photography, moving it away from a painting sensibility. That makes more sense to me in Stieglitz's era than it does now. By now, I would think we could have come full circle and recognize and embrace our camaraderie with painters rather than needing so much to separate ourselves from them. Of course, it's a matter of personal vision and desire. There's, for sure, nothing wrong with Shore wanting to do that but I think by now most have noticed the unique aspects of photography and aren't dependent on the aesthetics of painting so much as drawn to that aesthetics almost as a universal way of seeing.</p>

<p>For example, I don't think of my material as mainly light. I think of it as narrative and visualization/vision. Light, for me, is the life force behind the narratives and vision I seek out or discover. What I can learn from and share with painting, for me, is a bonus. As in the "reductive" thread, I tend not to be reductive, so don't often (though sometimes I might) feel a desire to reduce photographs to their main element or strip them down to what they alone can only be. I learned something a long time ago about myself which is that though many like to advise artists to let go of their minds and focus or rely completely on their emotions or instincts, I can't and have no desire to do that. While it took me some time to come to a passionate place in my life, I won't deny parts of me that are very much philosophical and intellectual Fred even while being always willing to explore parts of me that have gone underdeveloped. Seeing intelligence or mentality as a hindrance is not a limit I seem willing or able to impose on myself, though I never say never. For me, the mind is not part of the material of painting or photography. It's part of my own makeup.</p>

<p>It reminds me of the thread where I got in trouble for suggesting there might be unique characteristics of digital photography that were worth exploring. A poster suggested we no longer call "photography" what he prefers to call "digital image-making," so we could more easily make that break from what he referred to as the "shackles" of photography. I don't see it as a break, any more than I see photography as a break from painting. If I am able to explore uniquely digital aspects of photos, I would bring to that all I've learned both from the history of photography and the history of painting. I don't have to wipe slates clean in order to move on. So, as Julie suggests, it might be worthwhile noticing what Shore is pointing out, but I'm not sure I'd want to take that as far as eliminating painterly aesthetics from my picture-making. </p>

<p>One can, but one doesn't have to, throw the baby out with the bath water. I prefer wrapping the freshly-clean baby in a nicely-colored terry cloth towel and keeping him or her around.</p>

<p>[Julie, I want to make clear that I don't think you're advocating here, but rather explaining what you think Shore is getting at, which is helpful considering I don't have the source material.]</p>

<p>For reference, <a href="http://www.lapispress.com/5300_stephenshore.htm">these are the two images(separate pages) that are the subject of the article by Shore.</a></p>

<p>Fred and Julie, I find the discussion interesting but not necessarily what Shore was getting at. The issue for him had more to do with finding a visual solution that was right for the times. That expressed or fit with the reality of the day.</p>

<p>The article starts out by his suggesting that before he made these photographs that his work had been exploring the structure of the photograph. Getting more and more challenging as the images became more structurally complex--the density of his images was increasing.</p>

<p>While making the first image, he suggests that he was working with the one point perspective he had used in <a href="http://www.kunstmarkt.com/pagesprz/stephen_shore/_d902-/show_praesenz.html?&lang=en">another image (here) a year earlier</a> and how much more complex this current image. He talked about how he was managing/juggling as many of these "interstices" (Standard sign and pole beneath) as he could.</p>

<p>He seems to suggest that while making this first image that he had a bit of an epiphany, that he had done what he set out to do in studying the structuring of an image but was finding that he was "imposing" a 17th century visual construct to relate to a 20th century reality. The "form and pressure of this age" was not being expressed. His solution, the next day and the second image, was to try to communicate his experience of being there without overlaying an overridding structural principle--thus making form more invisible allowing the artist's understanding and experience to become more apparent.</p>

<p>I haven't done any real analysis of Shore's work with this information in hand to see if this in fact marks any major change in his approach, but the first image is certainly the more well known of the two and the one in his book, Uncommon Places--although there are certainly others more like this second one in the book.</p>

<p>Throughout the article--short one at that--he did refer to several different painters and modes of expression and how there had been movements undertaken to assert a new way of looking/seeing--a new visual language. Although he doesn't suggest this here, I think he is trying to suggest the idea behind the New Topographics which was seen as a radical departure to presenting the Western Landscape. I remember well at the time this movement was becoming more known that it, as well as the work of several artists at the time, were being considered or described as "academic". Although the moniker did describe the genesis of much of the work I think it was just an euphemism for "I don't get it".</p>

<p>Many good comments above...</p>

<p>Julie's echo a story I read from Shore about being at a dinner party in the 1970's, and to his surprise, Ansel Adams was also a guest. He talked to AA, and the latter (after downing six vodkas) matter-of-factly remarked that in the 1940's he'd had a creative hot streak, but that since then, he's just been "boiling the pot". Shore's reaction was strong: Since then, he's been careful to avoid "boiling the pot" personally, taking great care to move on and avoid getting mired down in his own schtick.</p>

<p>[i am not advocating what he said, just commenting on it and how it fits with the article in Aperture, which I haven't read, and what Julie said].<br>

____________________________________________</p>

<p>I am of the belief that consciousness is ex post facto, and that the subconscious does most of the heavy lifting. This is not to say it is useless. Consciousness seems to play leapfrog well with the unconscious. They nudge and cajole each other like good friends who disagree on almost everything. And everybody seems to have their own proportion between the two, and it varies in trait and state factors. So the idea that where we stand (which sets perspective) should or should not be conscious escapes me.<br>

____________________________________________</p>

<p>Photography re-entered the arts arena a long time ago, and did so on a very different plane than at its onset. Now it addresses many issues in common with painting, sculpture, etc. as a member of the family, not the read-headed bastard stepchild.</p>

<p> </p>

John A. Thank you for your reading of Shore. For me, the issue is geometric and static, and organic and dynamic. I should read Shore. Thanks again.

<p>Thanks to John A, I see what the article is referring to. That was a turning point for Shore, one he has talked about in other articles and interviews. Very different pictures, specially regarding the imposition of order.</p>

<p>Thanks for creating an appetite for the thoughts of Shore, who like Eggleston, ostensibly emulated the photorealistic painting approach and its subject matter and gave photography another direction (although Shore states that Frank considerably influenced his own approach), although one which I think may be destined to be less long-lived than may be thought, notwithstanding its popularity among art investors (and appreciators?). Initial resistance to rapidly popular new forms of visual expression (e.g., David Hamilton's dreamy images of nubile young women in idealic settings) is my little personal albatross, but one which usually gives way to a more prolonged, analytical and systematic reflection, when catalyzed by useful available feet-on-the-ground critiques by the cognisenti.</p>

<p>If anyone has a link to some of Shore's thoughts, in addition to those appearing in Aperture, or to critical evaluations of his thoughts or work, or to those of other photorealistic influenced photographers (Eggleston, Burtynski, etc.), they would make good references here and I would be glad to read them. </p>

<p>Eggleston cites HCB (books, not prints), Kandinsky, and Degas as influences. Long before photorealism (PR), what would become its subjects were the stuff of Atget and particularly Walker Evans (whom both and Frank trace back to). Eggleston was working in color at the same time PR was in its infancy. I'm not saying he wasn't influenced by it, but his early color development was simultaneous with that of PR. BTW, Shore's first MOMA show was all <em>unframed</em> Kodak machine prints (!). In the next room was a show by Paul Strand, all platinum and framed. Shore also cites Ed Ruscha as an influence on Uncommon Places. Warhol's conceptualism is something that Shore repeatedly mentions. And in American Surfaces, there's a flashed portrait of....William Eggleston.</p>

<p>Two quick suggestions to articles on Shore and Eggleston (I do not see Burtinsky remotely near that league).</p>

<p>For W.E.:</p>

<p>http://www.americansuburbx.com/?s=eggleston&submit.x=7&submit.y=10</p>

<p>For Shore:</p>

<p>http://www.americansuburbx.com/?s=stephen+shore&submit.x=15&submit.y=10</p>

<p>One more thing on Shore...the first trip he took, when all he carried was the Rollei 35mm, shows that what he would later "discover" with the two pictures around that intersection was a re-discovery. Look closely at American surfaces, his second book. The work precedes that in Uncommon Places. At ten years old he was reading Walker Evans, who takes us back to Atget.</p>

<p>Luis said, "Look closely at American surfaces" ...</p>

<p>Ummm ... no thanks. You can look at it from ten feet away and get the message. It's not exactly subtle.</p>

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<p>You can look at it from ten feet away and get the message.</p>

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<p>Sometimes it's not the message that I look closely at. It's how the message is carried. It's what the photo looks like. I could spend hours looking at this work and a lot of other work, precisely to get past the message . . . which is often what I get from other people's summaries, not from my own looking. Message is over-rated. </p>

<p>"Look closely" wasn't about messaging. It was about looking at the work in context, against history, as a matter of discovery, in light of his own previous work, relative to his influences. It was about connectedness.</p>

<p>What page of <em>American Surfaces</em> did you find especially engaging?</p>

<p>I look at it more as a body of work.</p>

<p><a href="http://deutsche-boerse.com/dbag/dispatch/en/binary/gdb_content_pool/imported_files/public_files/20_images/46_topics_art_collection/79_shore/Shore4_522x413.jpg">Here's one</a> I like. I spend time looking closely at the color work. It gives me ideas for my own work.</p>

<p>So... Julie doesn't see anything in Shore's <em>American Surfaces. </em>But others here do, and are interested. </p>

<p>Fred, the picture you linked isn't in <em>American Surfaces</em>.</p>

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the photorealist painters were the first artists to digitize photographs.

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<p>Fred, the picture you linked isn't in <em>American Surfaces</em>.</p>

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<p>I trusted the Internet. <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://deutsche-boerse.com/dbag/dispatch/en/binary/gdb_content_pool/imported_files/public_files/20_images/46_topics_art_collection/79_shore/Shore4_522x413.jpg&imgrefurl=http://jeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2007/05/stephen-shore-american-surfaces-1969-79.html&usg=__13Qid-nW9QEAgraKbm4rmZOodZc=&h=413&w=522&sz=73&hl=en&start=6&zoom=1&tbnid=E8M7m9dUgeN_7M:&tbnh=104&tbnw=131&ei=H0DmTpLHLeebiQLGqLmVBg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Damerican%2Bsurfaces%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1">This guy</a> has a blog entry where he claims to be showing several from <em>American Surfaces</em>. I guess he's wrong.</p>

<p>In any case, I've looked at a lot of Shore's work on line. (I look at a lot of books, too, but am not in a financial position right now to buy and own a lot of them.) I imagine some of the ones that I'm seeing on line and are claimed to be from <em>American Surfaces</em> are. Too bad I picked one that seems not to be from there. Just imagine my picking another that actually is from the book and consider what I said about them as a whole, as well as what Luis described. And thanks for the correction.</p>

<p>The underblown in art is often overblown, or is it the question of "the emperor's new clothes"? (Yes, yes, don't tell me, the museum directors and the cognoscenti are among the front line of the waiting crowds). Julie is applying I think her artistic senses in finding little in some of the images of the photo photo-realists. It appears to be a suicidal act to not find impressive the imagery and symbolism of the helter-skelter of consumer society suburbia or its shopping mall equivalent. Unless perhaps if one has a BFA or an MFA and speaks in hushed tones. Other than the virtues of applying a seasoned craft approach to compositional balance and to chromatic harmonies or dialogue, do these photographers provide a communication that is convincing?</p>

<p>Pray that someone in the know take the time to dissect the elements of the images and their compositional and communicative forces and so inform the poor philistines. Conversion is possible, if reason is probable.</p>

<p>Burtynsky is perhaps a new boy on the block, but I for one find his imagery arresting and very pertinent to our times. The series on the oil industry does not light any fires with me, but his Asian ship breakers, his metallurgical slag heaps and his mammoth quarries are I think well perceived and interpreted via his mind and large format lenses, and send a communication to their viewers that is not simply some frozen view of America as the not so beautiful and of suburbia as emblematic of current cultural values (the latter is a place I hastened to escape from as soon as possible as a youth, and as a rural immigrant I am now probably unable to appreciate the incarnation of suburbia and the consumer society via the photo photo-realist's photo emulsions and pixels).</p>

<p>We need I think an "angry young men"* movement in photographic art, and one that is not burdened by the directions of the heroes of the past (so often quoted, and with little regard to the current young professional photographers of note worldwide) and the viewpoints of aging college art professors (I am presuming they are not very young, but really have no statistics to prove that, but it does often take time to achieve full professorships) and their disciples. I may well not know what I am talking about but I do know what I think is important.</p>

<p>* À la theatrical movement of mid 20th century Britain.</p>

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<p>Julie is applying I think her artistic senses in finding little in some of the images of the photo photo-realists.</p>

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<p>Not at all, she's advocating not looking closely. (<em>"You can look at it from ten feet away and get the message."</em>)</p>

<p>What Luis and I seem to be talking about is our willingness to understand and spend time looking closely at photographers (even some of whom we may not like and some of whom we may find unimpressive). There are all kinds of reasons to look closely at all kinds of work, as Luis has pointed out.</p>

<p>No one suggested anyone be impressed by Shore's work. I was advocating taking the time to look at it closely, which is what Julie was saying was unnecessary.</p>

<p>I have neither a BFA nor an MFA and have never been accused of speaking in hushed tones. But I have determined it's helpful and important to look closely at a lot of different kinds of work, even and sometimes especially stuff I don't like. The "poor philistines" can do whatever they want. I'm not interested in converting even one of them. If I did manage to convert them, they might no longer be philistines and what fun would that be?</p>

<p>Eggleston and Shore knew each other from early on, as the latter was at The Factory frequently, and W.E. was also there often, specially before and while dating Viva and teaching at Harvard (and juggling a wife and another misstress back home!). Eggleston also hung with Winogrand, Papageorge and Meyerowitz. Also Friedlander. They would have seen and known about each other's work at the time, and I'm sure were exposed to Photo-realism from its early shows. Not many degrees of separation in that exalted crowd.</p>

<p>[i could well be wrong, but I would think the first artists to digitize a photo would have been the first Xerox collagists/artists, as part of the process involves digitization. There were earlier digital artists, but they were not digitizing photographs. Maybe Don is thinking of C. Close.]</p>

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<p>It appears to be a suicidal act to not find impressive the imagery and symbolism of the helter-skelter of consumer society suburbia or its shopping mall equivalent.</p>

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<p>Of course not.</p>

<p>I tend not to be subject-centric a lot of the time. For me, it's more about how the subject is seen than what subject in particular is being looked at.</p>

<p>I spend a lot of time in Florida and would never want to live there, but find it visually a fascinating alternative to the big, thriving, cultural city I live in and to the many places in nature I have at my fingertips. The manscaping has a lot of photographic potential. I've only recently started developing a photographic approach to suburbia, it's pristinely-decorated homes and shopping mall equivalents. Not because I think they're such terrific subjects. But because I think I can show them in a photographically compelling and/or transformative or moving way. And not because of any trend <em>per se</em>, though such trends may be influential. But because it is <em>personal</em> to me and something I'm experiencing directly and intimately quite often. </p>