Episode notes
He sold prints to MoMA at fourteen. He shot Warhol's Factory at seventeen. He hung at the Met at twenty-three. Then he drove into the flattest, most ordinary corners of America.
Most photographers would ride that arc for fifty years. Stephen Shore looked around and thought: I have no idea what this country looks like. So in 1972 he drove into the America between the cities with a pocket camera chosen for looking amateurish, photographed every meal, every bed, every gas station, developed the film like anyone's holiday snaps, and taped around 220 drugstore prints to the wall of New York's Light Gallery: pancakes and motel bedspreads, at eye level, in an art gallery. He hung up America's junk drawer and said, calmly: this is what our life actually looks like. Somebody should take it seriously.
Then he went the other way: an 8×10 view camera the size of a suitcase, every sheet expensive, every setup slow, a man publicly taking a parking lot seriously. He traded convenience for attention, and the photographs got quieter and deeper. That's Uncommon Places. He left us the idea I keep close: a photographer solves a picture, more than composes one. Composing sounds like decorating. Solving sounds like listening. And at Bard, this happily-digital master still makes every student start on film, because film makes the decisions physical. That is what we mean when we call film photography a sport.
Your move this week: pose yourself one small problem. One street corner all week, only white things, twenty minutes without moving your feet. No camera? Find the structure in one boring view out one window. The rule sounds like a game. The game is the training.
Coming Saturday: the movement in motion. Somewhere out there, a fourteen-year-old is deciding to take something seriously. It might as well be you.
I'm Dan. This has been Negative Thinking. New episodes Wednesday and Saturday. Follow wherever you listen.
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