"How America's Most Cherished Photographer Learned to See" / Stephen Shore with Peter Schjeldahl

[faberryman]

My experience is that there are a lot of great albums produced by great artists in the last 60 or so years and none have fillers.

Certainly, if you think Stephen Shore's photograph of the parking lot you posted is a great photograph, we have a difference of opinion. Like I said at the outset, I guess I lack the requisite artistic sensibilities to appreciate it.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

At the first art school I went to, those students most adept at art-speak gained the most praise and attention even though they were doing things like wrapping parts of the basement in plastic, which was already an old idea at the time. I left before the first semester was finished.

The second school emphasized a solid foundation of skills before wild explorations. I was happier there. I also went in the early 1980's when people started to look at art as an investment tool (more interested in beating their stock market investments rather than interested in the art itself) and when that happened, it seems the work became secondary to what kind of buzz it created and how fast prices were going up.

Now where did that grumpy old man finger shaking smilie go?

 

[snusmumriken]

From the NYT obit:

"Few critics could match Mr. Schjeldahl (pronounced SHELL-doll) for his intimate knowledge of New York’s art world, which he wrote about with undiminished enthusiasm for more than half a century."

Well it’s a Scandinavian surname (albeit with a Germanic spelling in this case) and I suggested how a Scandi would say it. Of course everything has slipped, over your of the Puddle.

 

[Peter Schrager]

Stephen Shore will be at Rizzoli Book Store on the 2/23 @ 6pm to talk about his new book with Michael mack his publisher
New York City!

 

[warden]

Well it’s a Scandinavian surname (albeit with a Germanic spelling in this case) and I suggested how a Scandi would say it. Of course everything has slipped, over your of the Puddle.

Ah now I see. Maybe he used the NYT pronunciation to make it "easier".

 

[Sirius Glass]

10 extra bonus points to anyone who can tell me who anointed Steven Shore America's Most Cherished Photographer and why. Certainly significant, but cherished? And most cherished?

Steven who ?

My thoughts too. He has some interesting approaches, but cherished? Not by me.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I guess I lack the requisite artistic sensibilities to appreciate it.

Interesting that you put it that way. I don't think Stephen Shore's work is about art—i.e., that he's thinking about art or that he's trying to create an artwork. His work is about seeing, about being aware of the world that surrounds us, about paying attention (he devotes a fascinating chapter in his book Modern Instances: the Craft of Photography). It's a question of "communicating a perception of the world" as he says, quoting Walker Evans, and seeing what meaning, if any, comes out of it.

In many ways he's a traditionalist because a lot of his concern, from a technical point of view, is the same one as all painters who have done landscape for the last 2,000 years, that is, how do you organize three-dimensional space on a flat surface. Difference of course is that he's interested in what is there, about the landscape and about topography, and what meaning they convey (often from a cultural point of view).

It's not at all an intellectual stance, as people too lazy to read him tend to assume. It's about connexion—about connecting with the world, or, as he puts it in the article (and elsewhere): "While I may have questions or intentions that guide what I’m interested in photographing at a particular moment, and even guide exactly where I place my camera, the core decision still comes from recognizing a feeling of deep connection, a psychological or emotional or physical resonance with the picture’s content."

In that sense, he's close to Robert Adams. He wants you to look, to pay attention, to wonder what meaning (if any) lies within. So you can't really approach him with your "artistic sensibility," or, at least, very differently than you would a tableau by Monet, Van Gogh or Degas. It's a different kind of sensibility this kind of photography calls for. Going for "artistic" is like bringing a match to light an electric stove.

It's not that it's void of artistic intent: just the way he works with color—the sheer beauty of color and the way they play within the frame—is proof of that. It's just that there are other factors at work in our appreciation.

 

[CMoore]

10 extra bonus points to anyone who can tell me who anointed Steven Shore America's Most Cherished Photographer and why. Certainly significant, but cherished? And most cherished?

Best, biggest, most, turning point, funniest, first, etc etc etc
Frequently very subjective if not meaningless adjectives in all of life's endeavors.

 

[warden]

It's about connexion—about connecting with the world, or, as he puts it in the article (and elsewhere): "While I may have questions or intentions that guide what I’m interested in photographing at a particular moment, and even guide exactly where I place my camera, the core decision still comes from recognizing a feeling of deep connection, a psychological or emotional or physical resonance with the picture’s content."

In that sense, he's close to Robert Adams.

Agree with all that. I think his work from the '70s, especially documenting the struggles of the rust belt, has aged well. And like Adams he seems to have a gift for depicting redeeming light and atmosphere, even when he's on a depressing assignment.

Steel becomes rust: Stephen Shore’s images of industrial decline

In 1977, Stephen Shore went to New York State, Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio – in what later became known as the rust belt – to photograph factories, workers and their families

www.theguardian.com

 

[cliveh]

I would suggest that if you have to describe your photography to justify it's artistic merit, then you are talking bull shit.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Interesting that you put it that way. I don't think Stephen Shore's work is about art—i.e., that he's thinking about art or that he's trying to create an artwork. His work is about seeing, about being aware of the world that surrounds us, about paying attention (he devotes a fascinating chapter in his book Modern Instances: the Craft of Photography). It's a question of "communicating a perception of the world" as he says, quoting Walker Evans, and seeing what meaning, if any, comes out of it.

In many ways he's a traditionalist because a lot of his concern, from a technical point of view, is the same one as all painters who have done landscape for the last 2,000 years, that is, how do you organize three-dimensional space on a flat surface. Difference of course is that he's interested in what is there, about the landscape and about topography, and what meaning they convey (often from a cultural point of view).

It's not at all an intellectual stance, as people too lazy to read him tend to assume. It's about connexion—about connecting with the world, or, as he puts it in the article (and elsewhere): "While I may have questions or intentions that guide what I’m interested in photographing at a particular moment, and even guide exactly where I place my camera, the core decision still comes from recognizing a feeling of deep connection, a psychological or emotional or physical resonance with the picture’s content."

In that sense, he's close to Robert Adams. He wants you to look, to pay attention, to wonder what meaning (if any) lies within. So you can't really approach him with your "artistic sensibility," or, at least, very differently than you would a tableau by Monet, Van Gogh or Degas. It's a different kind of sensibility this kind of photography calls for. Going for "artistic" is like bringing a match to light an electric stove.

It's not that it's void of artistic intent: just the way he works with color—the sheer beauty of color and the way they play within the frame—is proof of that. It's just that there are other factors at work in our appreciation.

Stephen Shore very clears states from the beginning and all through the video that he is talking about seeing and he does not use the word art.

 

[awty]

People have a great romance with nostalgia. I wonder if it was that at the time or has become so.
When I was growing up in the seventies the only time you heard Beetles music was on 4BH beautiful music which as you can imagine was directed at older people. Weirdly their still playing the same songs. When you get old you start liking the Beetles, thats why Im still young, cause I cant stand the Beetles.
How do you see for the present.

 

[MattKing]

I would suggest that if you have to describe your photography to justify it's artistic merit, then you are talking bull shit.

And if you only see artistic merit only in what is immediately visible in a single photograph, then you are ignoring many of the contributions to art that photography (as compared to a single photograph) can make.

 

[faberryman]

And if you only see artistic merit only in what is immediately visible in a single photograph, then you are ignoring many of the contributions to art that photography (as compared to a single photograph) can make.

Not really. You are just making a judgment about a single photograph. Not every photograph by a great photographer is a great photograph.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I would suggest that if you have to describe your photography to justify it's artistic merit, then you are talking bull shit.

He's not describing his photography, he talks about his process, which many artists have done before him, from Da Vinci to Delacroix to Kandinsky and many others as far as painting is concerned, and so did Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Tod Papageorge, Minor White, Gordon Parks, Lisette Model, Lewis Baltz, Paul Strand, Teju Cole, Sid Grossman, Luigi Ghirri, Susan Meiselas, Robert Adams, Dawoud Bey, Dorothea Lange, and countless others in the realm of photography. They talked — either in interviews, extended writings or in their teachings — about what they did, why they did it, how they did it, and why they did it the way they did.

Photographers are actually the brainiest of all craftsmen in the art world. And that's normal. Photography is the most ambiguous of all arts, because of the tenuous, complicated relationship it holds between representation and reality, between representation and identity. Purely instinctive photographers don't exist, or are few—Cartier-Bresson is often confused with one, but that's because his thought process took him in the direction of Zen philosophy (he mentions in many interviews the major influence the book "Zen and the Art of Archery" had on his process). Cartier-Bresson was a pure intellectual in the French mid-20th-century tradition.

Photographers are not only the brainiest, but also the most articulate. Reading Robert Adams, Stephen Shore or Tod Papageorge is a constant pleasure

And none of these are doing it to "justify the artistic merit" of their work. They rarely talk about art, and even less merit. They are just saying "This is why I photograph, these are the problems I've encountered while doing it, and this is how I've tried to solve them".

I venture that any photographer who doesn't ask him- or herself these questions at least once in a while is doing bull shit.

 

[MattKing]

Not really. You are just making a judgment about a single photograph.

And if you limit your appreciation to single photographs, you are greatly constraining the potential value of a photographer's work.

 

[faberryman]

And if you limit your appreciation to single photographs, you are greatly constraining the potential value of a photographer's work.

Who is limiting one's appreciation of a photographer's work to single photographs?

 

[Alex Benjamin]

People have a great romance with nostalgia. I wonder if it was that at the time or has become so.
When I was growing up in the seventies the only time you heard Beetles music was on 4BH beautiful music which as you can imagine was directed at older people. Weirdly their still playing the same songs. When you get old you start liking the Beetles, thats why Im still young, cause I cant stand the Beetles.
How do you see for the present.

I listen to Beethoven, Ravel, Benny Goodman, John Coltrane, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Ravi Shankar, Peter Gabriel, Kendrick Lamar and others.

I believe great music transcends time, and place.

That makes me neither young or old, but ageless.

 

[MattKing]

Who is limiting one's appreciation of a photographer's work to single photographs?

Anyone who discounts the value of accompanying the photograph with additional information - my response was mainly directed at cliveh's comment.

 

[warden]

I would suggest that if you have to describe your photography to justify it's artistic merit, then you are talking bull shit.

Oh I don’t know, I would say Shore practices “the contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture.” Sound familiar?

 

[awty]

I listen to Beethoven, Ravel, Benny Goodman, John Coltrane, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Ravi Shankar, Peter Gabriel, Kendrick Lamar and others.

I believe great music transcends time, and place.

That makes me neither young or old, but ageless.

Sorry that's just the usual populous old peoples music. You'll have to start wearing socks with your sandals.
World's crippled by lack of diversity.

 

[Maris]

It is a familiar trajectory to the doorway of fame and acclaim. A young photographer gets an early career boost from a famous figure; Edward Steichen himself blessed Stephen Shore. Then the photographer goes on to fulfill the triple play: an American photographer making sympathetic photographs of American subject matter for an American audience. This while being immersed in the American art culture of the time.

But getting through that fame+acclaim doorway needs more and Stephen Shore has done it through persistence, productivity, consistent vision within his chosen genre, and maintaining a profile in art photography circles. That's not easy, that takes work, and either dedication or genius or both. Shore's body of work is sumptuous and I respect it while not caring to look at it much.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

And if you limit your appreciation to single photographs, you are greatly constraining the potential value of a photographer's work.

I think this is an interesting discussion to have. There was another thread a while back about modern photographic movements, and thinking about understanding/appreciating photographs in terms of series rather than in terms of individual photos certainly is a characteristic of our times.

It comes hand in hand with the resurgence of the photo book.

But getting through that fame+acclaim doorway needs more and Stephen Shore has done it through persistence, productivity, consistent vision within his chosen genre, and maintaining a profile in art photography circles. That's not easy, that takes work, and either dedication or genius or both. Shore's body of work is sumptuous and I respect it while not caring to look at it much.

This is a masterclass about how to talk about an artist whose work one doesn't have affinity for yet still tries to understand.

 

[MattKing]

People have a great romance with nostalgia. I wonder if it was that at the time or has become so.
When I was growing up in the seventies the only time you heard Beetles music was on 4BH beautiful music which as you can imagine was directed at older people. Weirdly their still playing the same songs. When you get old you start liking the Beetles, thats why Im still young, cause I cant stand the Beetles.
How do you see for the present.

Sorry that's just the usual populous old peoples music. You'll have to start wearing socks with your sandals.
World's crippled by lack of diversity.

Last time I checked, a reference to a list of music - or photography - that is meaningful to the party who lists them is more likely to be inclusive, than a rejection of diversity.
Feel free to provide lists - of music or photography - that you find meaningful. There may be intersections with the lists that others would construct. Or your list may be full of stuff that is new to one of us, most of us, or all of us.
In any event, if we get a chance to learn of artists that are new to us, it is nothing but good.
But please don't criticize others for having different lists than you do. Those lists represent the experiences we already have had, not the ones we have yet to enjoy.
I had a member of my extended family die recently. He was into his 90s, so it isn't a tragedy, even if sad. But there was a line in his obituary that I aspire to. He was described as "rarely acting his age". I like that.

 

[koraks]

@MattKing's response is the mild one.

I'd like to put it a little less mildly: no insults. @awty, that response was uncalled for. Chastising people for their taste in music? For Pete's sake.