Review: Stephen Shore at the MoMA
In the Museum of Modern Art’s Stephen Shore retrospective, Shore captures moments that can’t help but evoke familiarity: Andy Warhol perched late at night in a dingy Chinatown restaurant; a collection of postcards, neatly arranged, plucked from an old briefcase in an antique shop. Eggs, toast, and bacon, found in any diner just off the highway. A flash of leopard print on a sunny Sixth Avenue. A journey from black and white to artificial neon color, then back to Earth.
The desire to capture small instances in our mundane lives and hold onto them forever has always been a motivating force behind photography, even before the invention of instant cameras and later, the smartphone camera, which allows any user to capture and share images instantaneously. There is something incredibly satisfying about taking a photo of your breakfast, or capturing a puzzling stranger when they aren’t looking. Stephen Shore bridges the gap between fulfilling this urge and creating art by capturing common moments with a delicate yet humorous attitude. From his first silver prints to his Instagram feed, Shore’s photography is always changing, and always redefining what great photography can be.
The exhibition is arranged chronologically, following different artistic periods and important series in Shore’s career. I especially enjoyed American Surfaces, a series compiled from dozens of images, with most taken over the course of a road trip during the 1970’s. While at first glance these photos appear mundane, they share a beckoning quality. After researching this exhibit, as well as Shore after attending, I enjoyed a review written for the New Yorker by Peter Schjeldahl, who remarks, “The pictures in both series share a quality of surprise: appearances surely unappreciated if even really noticed by anyone before—in rural Arizona, a phone booth next to a tall cactus, on which a crude sign (“garage”) is mounted, and, on a small-city street in Wisconsin, a movie marquee’s neon wanly aglow, at twilight.” The element of surprise in American Surfaces is the same quality that makes us want to capture an image to save it for another time. These unplanned instances captured by Shore gives his work a quality that is nothing like a studio-captured image, but more special than the average snapshot.
Shore’s work continually disrupts the notion that to being photographer means spending hours in a darkroom and possessing an expertise with equipment, as well as a disdain for anything “point and shoot.” In American Surfaces, the layout of Shore’s quick road trip snapshots reminded me of the modern Instagram feed. Later, Shore’s actual Instagram feed is displayed on iPads, updating in real time. Not a bit of his artistry is compromised in the transfer from analog to digital. In a review and interview written by Scott Indrisek from artsy.net, Shore describes how although his iPhone has the capability to shoot multiple images in seconds, he typically still takes one snapshot. “Even if I’m photographing with my phone, I’ll still just take one picture, because I will have figured out essentially what I want...I’m not interested in the pictures for their novelty—I’m interested in the aesthetic possibilities.”
While Shore’s work, as well as his development as an artist, is shown with an expert’s eye throughout the exhibition, the more traditionally framed and displayed photographs fell flat, especially the wide nature shots. A series of images from Monet’s home of Giverny, France capture the beauty of the gardens, but not much else. Perhaps the slow-moving quality of nature compared to people is what makes capturing nature, no matter how well, feel contrived
