STEPHEN SHORE | Uncommon Places - first edition

First edition, presumed first printing of the uncommon hardcover edition. 61 color photographs by Steven Shore. An important and early statement of American color photography.  A beautiful copy. Very scarce in this condition. 

Selected for “The Photobook : A History - Volume 2” (p. 35). Martin Parr and Gerry Badger write :

"Shore remains non-judgemental, certainly more so than Robert Adams, and perhaps more than Walker Evans. The narrative voice in his work is a reserved one, which must be garnered carefully from the many incidental clues scattered throughout. The pictures in Uncommon Places are about the real - a clear, luminous, cogent reality - set down in a way that is rarely achieved by most photographers. This is what makes them so touch-ing, so exhilarating and so important."  - "The Photobook"

As new book in near fine jacket. Pages and boards are pristine. Dust jacket has a very small, light mark to the back and very faint sunning to spine. Otherwise, jacket appears to be perfectly preserved. Original glossy finish is not rubbed. Original $30.00 price on jacket is not clipped.  Dust jacket in clear plastic protective sleeve. Fine condition  overall.

“Stephen Shore captures the essence of the American landscape by framing particular, ordinary elements so that they reveal the universal and the extraordinary. The viewpoint of his camera is never special; it is that of our own absent-minded eyes as we wander through familiar places doing ordinary things-waiting for a bus or driving on an errand. In Shore's photographs we discover the mislaid images that we ignored because of their very familiarity or rejected because of their banality. Our conscious minds seek more interesting or less objectionable scenes -- Alpine peaks or Italian piazzas; in Shore's art we confront what we usually do not notice, streets and façades at once well known and remote, half-remembered and half-forgotten.

Shore's is the art of deadpan - rejecting exotic compositions, artful editing, or facile simplification. He accepts the threadbare banality of the American scene, the jerry-rigged, down-at-the-heels seediness of our rural landscapes and the spatial looseness of our towns, recapturing the overfamiliar, making it poignant, coherent, and almost lovable." - ROBERT VENTURI, Architect (from the back cover)

"Stephen Shore seizes upon a landscape of the commonplace - and transforms it into visions of classical beauty. These are scenes that would scarcely attract the attention of most travelers. Among them: an unpaved backstreet in Presidio, Texas; a nearly abandoned beach in Miami; a highway intersection near Kingman, Arizona; children playing on a sandbar in Yosemite; a softball game in Bozeman, Montana, and a plate of hotcakes on a diner's plastic-topped table.

Executed as photographs of flawless composition, as experiences of light and color unsurpassed for subtlety and resonance, Shore's images are something more: the nondescript emerges as an opportunity for awakened perception and deepening contemplation.

Shore's is an accomplishment of unexpected generosity. He presents the beauty of the actual either waiting to be discovered or to be experienced anew, and differently, in all places. Devoid of sentimentality, rich in higher emotional content, Shore's work introduces a new dimension of purity into American photography." - from the dust jacket flap

11.5 x 9.8 inches