Stephen Shore: Badlands National Monument, South Dakota, July 14, 1973

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Stephen Shore: Badlands National Monument, South Dakota, July 14, 1973

A Road Trip Journal Collector's Edition

A unique opportunity to own a limited edition c-type print by Stephen Shore.

Stephen Shore

Editions:

Price: USD$4,000.00

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PRINT

C-type print (tritone)

Sheet size: 355 x 430 mm (14 x 17 inches)

Box: 482 x 362 mm (19 x 14 1/4 inches)

Printed in 2009 in an edition of 100 plus 5 artist's proofs

All copies are signed and numbered by Stephen Shore

ISBN-13: 9780714856124

ABOUT THE PRINT

On 3rd July 1973 Stephen Shore (b.1947) set out on a road trip. The journey marked an important turning point in his career, as he was coming to the tail end of American Surfaces and embarking on what came to be known as Uncommon Places.

In the month-long journal that Shore kept on his trip, he itemized, in a deadpan, unemotional style, everywhere he stayed, what he ate, what television programmes he watched and how many miles he drove; he also included postcards of the towns that he stayed in, glued in alongside hotel, restaurant and gas-station receipts and a listing of every photograph he took on the way.

As he travelled, he photographed the towns and cities he drove through, the people he met, the food he ate, the beds he slept in, from New York to Greensburg, Pennsylvania, from San Francisco to Holbrook, Arizona and onwards.

By the 13th July he had arrived in South Dakota. On the 14th he had cereal for breakfast, steak for lunch and a blt for dinner. He stayed in the El Centro Motel in Kadoka and watched the Mary Tyler Moore show. During the day he made eight exposures. One of them was of this apparently unexceptional yellow cabin with a telegraph pole, a bush and car parked neatly beside it. Stephen Shore is a master of making us think about the ordinary in an extraordinary way.

SPECIAL EDITION BOOK IN SLIPCASE

Hardback

355 x 280 mm (14 x 11 inches)

248 pp

227 colour illustrations

ABOUT THE BOOK

In 1972, Stephen Shore left New York City and set out with a friend to Amarillo, Texas. He didn't drive, so his first view of America was framed by the passenger's window frame. He was taken aback by the fact that his experience of life as a New Yorker had very little in common with the character and aspirations of Middle America. Later that year he set out again, this time on his own, with just a driver's licence and a Rollei 35 - a point-and-shoot camera - to explore the country through the eyes of an everyday tourist.

The project was entitled American Surfaces, in reference to the superficial nature of his brief encounters with places and people, and the underlying character of the images that he hoped to capture. Shore photographed relentlessly and returned to New York triumphant, with hundreds of rolls of film spilling from his bags. In order to remain faithful to the conceptual foundations of the project, he followed the lead of most tourists of the time and sent his film to be developed and printed in Kodak's labs in New Jersey.

The result was hundreds and hundreds of exquisitely composed colour pictures, that became the benchmark for documenting our fast-living, consumer-orientated world. The corpus of his work - following on from Walker Evans' and Robert Frank's epic experiences of crossing America - influenced photographers such as Martin Parr and Bernd & Hilla Becher, who in turn introduced a new generation of students to Shore's work.

Phaidon Club

Stephen Shore: Badlands National Monument, South Dakota, July 14, 1973