Civilisation
CIVILISATION
(Transparencies)
From 1971 to 1979, the eminent American photographer Stephen Shore travelled often through the United States, capturing the people, places and landscapes he encountered along the way. Aside from the large view camera he usually used, with him he frequently carried a 35mm Leica. The photographs he took on it were spontaneous, intimate and personal, interrogating the formal conventions of photography with a quick, deft hand and a quiet, powerful presence.
Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971-1979 is a new book, published by MACK, which shares this body of work for the first time. It acts as an intimate reader, sitting comfortably alongside his more commonly known series Uncommon Places; the vocabulary is the same, but the language slightly different. We spoke to Shore about this unique catalogue over Zoom, from his home in Tivoli, New York, in week eight of the COVID-19 lockdown.
