(1947, NYC, USA)

Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his blank images, banal scenes and objects about the United States. He pioneered the use of color photography.

He was interested in photography from a very young age. Self-taught, when he was six years old, his uncle gave him a dark room for development. He started using a 35mm camera three years later to take his first color photographs. When he was ten years old, he was given a copy of Walker Evans’ book American Photographs, which profoundly influenced him. His professional career began at the age of fourteen when he presented his photographs to Edward Steichen, then in charge of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMa). Steichen who knew how to recognize the talent of Shore acquired three of his works. When he was seventeen he met Andy Warhol and began to frequent his studio, the Factory, to photograph Warhol and the creative environment around him. In 1971, at the age of 24, Shore was the second photographer in life to exhibit his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Shore embarked on a series of trips to rural America taking landscape photographs. In 1972 I made a trip from Manhattan to Amarillo, Texas, which sparked his interest in color photography. Observing the streets and villages I have traveled through, I had the idea of photographing them in color, first using a 35mm camera and then a 4×5 “camera and finally an 8×10” camera. In 1974 I received a NEA scholarship, followed in 1975 by a Guggenheim fellowship and in 1976 I exhibited his work in color at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA).

His 1982 book Uncommon Places was a kind of bible for new photographers who used color, because along with William Eggleston, his work contributed to the recognition of color photography. Many later photographers, such as Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Martin Parr, Joel Sternfeld, and Tomas Struth, have acknowledged being influenced by his work.

Currently and since 1982, Shore is the director of photography at Bard College, in Massachusetts.