Photo Sunday: Stephen Shore

I can't believe that it wasn't until last week that I'd ever heard of or seen the work of Stephen Shore.



Working in much the same vein (and the same time) as William Eggleston, Stephen Shore's style is nevertheless distinct. While Eggleston, as far as I know, always or at least usually shot with medium format or even 35 mm cameras, Stephen Shore works in 8x10.



Shooting with such a large camera and negative size, Shore's work has a much more painterly feel to it. It feels less spontaneous, but retains that impartiality that characterizes so much of Eggleston's work, too.


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Shore's interiors seem like a point of inspiration for Todd Hido, another of my favorite photographers.


This image is such a precursor to the work of Nan Goldin. She was more interested in people than fabric patterns, sure, but the aesthetic is quite similar.



Shore was born in 1947 (still alive, for the record) in New York City. His passion for photography began in childhood, and by the time he was 24, he had mounted a solo show in the MoMA. Shooting on cross-country road trips, Shore captured that proverbial American Landscape in its 1970s glory.


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As a young man, Stephen Shore hung out in Warhol's factory, and managed to snap some beautiful shots of the classic Factory denizens.


Nico


Lou Reed <3 and Andy Warhol

Unless otherwise specified, all images come from the website of Shore's representing gallery, 303 Gallery. All rights reserved to Stephen Shore and 303 Gallery. Biographical information comes from Shore's Wikipedia article. 

Photo Friday: William Eggleston

I've spent the last few days waffling over who to do for my first-ever Photo Friday. I wanted to do someone just a little under-the-radar just to be unexpected, but my soft spot for Eggleston got in the way.

William Eggleston's work pretty much single-handedly legitimized color photography as a valid art medium. Okay, legendary curator John Szarkowski helped, but Eggleston took the photos.

Born in Memphis in 1939, Eggleston took up photography as a hobby in the late 1950s. In the years that followed, he began experimenting with color photography. His real artistic breakthrough was his discovery of the dye-transfer process in 1972, which allowed him to create prints with hyperreal vibrancy and saturation. I don't mean to say that he invented it; he just discovered the capacity it held for his work.




I've always thought this photo by Juergen Teller from the Marc Jacobs Daisy campaign was a pretty blatant rip off of the photo above.



I love Eggleston for a few reasons. One is the immediacy of his work. The vibrant colors, shallow depth of field, and perfectly crisp focus isolate the subject in such a way that you see it not as an image on a page or a wall but as something physically before you. I also love the banal subjects he chooses. You could call it a postmodern statement, but I take it more as a reminder of how striking our everyday world really is.







Eggleston also has a place in my heart for his involvement with one of my all-time favorite bands, Big Star, who also hailed from Memphis. Eggleston did a lot of shooting in Memphis in the early 1970s, and the late Alex Chilton (Big Star's frontman) dated Eggleston's second cousin, Lesa. Big Star used Eggleston's famous "Red Ceiling" on the cover of their second album, Radio City.





Lesa, a beautiful young woman who had just graduated from high school, inspired many of the songs on Big Star's tragic nervous breakdown of a third album, Third / Sister Lovers. (So titled because another member of Big Star was dating Lesa's sister.)


The girl in red is Lesa. You can read more about this stunning photograph here and the Big Star implosion saga as it pertains to Lesa and Eggleston here. (These are really interesting reads, I highly recommend them!)


I think this is also Lesa.

Eggleston is still alive and working. In 2005, he was the subject of a documentary called William Eggleston in the Real World.

And, on another note, if you enjoy this blog, I would love for you to follow me on Google Friend Connect (link to the right) or via Bloglovin'! Let me know, and I'll be sure to follow you back.



All of these photos are copyright the Eggleston Trust. I pulled them from the following websites:
http://www.egglestontrust.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/11/07/arts/1107-EGGL_index.html

http://thelarkeyexperiments.com/2009/12/22/advice-from-william-eggleston/

http://www.ntimm.ca/_/category/music/