2 Make magic from the mundane
Get inspired by Stephen Shore, the chronicler of Americana
Never heard of Stephen Shore? Get ready for a treat. A new edition of Uncommon Places, which collects the greatest images by this influential American photographer, has just been published.
While the images, taken in the 1970s and early 1980s, are wonderfully evocative, Shore is much more than an archivist of a long-lost era, when sideburns were big and cars and computers were even bigger. He shows that a creative photographer can find inspiration everywhere – in the ordinary, the everyday and the banal. Petrol stations, Holiday Inns, mundane mid-America streets – all life is here.
So it’s a reminder that you don’t need to have the Lake District or Mount Fuji on your doorstep to take memorable photos. As critic Robert Venturi eloquently puts it: “Shore’s is the art of the deadpan – rejecting exotic compositions, artful editing or facile simplification… He recaptures the overfamiliar, making it poignant, coherent and almost lovable.” Uncommon Places: The Complete Works is available now from booksellers.
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* Wherever you live, you too can start to create a visual diary of your surroundings – something that was key to Shore’s approach. Think about building up a body of work that tells a story, rather than just a series of random, unconnected images. * Don’t obsess about always capturing the dramatic and explosive. The mundane and boring elements of our modern lives can make interesting subjects, and open the door for some wry social commentary. * Shore shot in colour for extra realism. Ironically, although the colour processing of Shore’s 1970s images may seem dated, the current vogue for film emulation in digital photography means his images also look positively on-trend! * Stay discrete, but try different gear. Shore took most of the images for his American Surfaces project on a small Rollei 35mm camera. Although he upgraded to a largeformat camera for Uncommon Places, you can get similarly high-resolution images with a quality digital SLR and a wide-angle lens. * Get a business card to give out if people wonder why are you taking pictures of non-touristy subjects. Or, as street photographer Nils Jorgensen counsels, tell them you are an artist!