Stephen Shore's photographs are attentive to ordinary scenes of daily experience, yet through color--and composition--Shore transforms the mundane into subjects of thoughtful meditation. A restaurant meal on a road trip, a billboard off a highway, and a dusty side street in a Texas town are all seemingly banal images, but upon reflection subtly imply meaning. Color photography attracted Shore for its ability to record the range and intensity of hues seen in life. In 1971, at age twenty-three, he became the first living photographer to have a one-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His 1982 book, Uncommon Places became a bible for young photographers seeking to work in color, because, along with that of William Eggleston, his work exemplified the fact that the medium could be considered art. Stephen Shore was born in New York in 1947. His work has been exhibited and collected at such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Library of Congress, Washington DC, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since 1982, he has been the director of the Photography Program at Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley.
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SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2024 Vehicular & Vernacular, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris
2017 Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
2016 C/O, Berlin, Germany
2015 Gijon Museum, Gijon, Spain
2014 Fundacion MAPFRE, Madrid, Spain
2013 “XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography”, Museum of Modern Art, New York
2011 “Abu Dhabi”, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
2007 "The Biographical Landscape", International Center of Photography, New York, NY
2005 “Stephen Shore: American Surfaces”, MoMA P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY
1992 Getty Museum [two-person], Los Angeles, CA
1990 Foundation Cartier, Jouy-en-Josas, France [two-person]
1977 Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, Germany
1976 Renwick Gallery, National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, DC
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
1971 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND AWARDS
2019 Master of Photography, Photo London
2010 Royal Photographic Society, Honorary Fellow
2010 German Photographic Society, Culture Prize
2005 Aperture Award
1980 American Academy in Rome
1979 National Endowment for the Arts
1975 Guggenheim Foundation
1974 National Endowment for the Arts
PUBLIC AND MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia
International Center of Photography, New York, NY
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY