CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/24/2017

A seeming paradox and an American treasure: Stephen Shore

One of American master Stephen Shore’s most iconic photographs, “Lookout Hotel, Ogunquit, Maine, July 16, 1974,” is reproduced from MoMA’s encyclopedic new retrospective exhibition catalog, published to accompany the show that opens this week. “At the age of seventy, Shore is both one of the most influential and one of the most elusive American photographers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a seeming paradox,” curator Quentin Bajac writes, noting that Shore’s work is characterized by a search for maximum clarity; an almost mystical respect for natural light; a preference for horizontal format; and extreme discipline in limiting shots. “Shore’s approach to photography is both transparent and contemplative, and marked by a willful economy of means.”