CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/26/2017

The American Surfaces of Stephen Shore

Reproduced from MoMA’s essential new Stephen Shore retrospective catalog, “Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 1972” was shot as part of the photographer’s largely autobiographical, road-trip heavy photo-diary, American Surfaces. Influenced by the conceptual practices of serial artists like Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha, an interest in amateur photography and a fascination with the aesthetics of kitch, vernacular and pop culture, this body of work is widely credited with having influenced the color photography of the next three decades, though it was shown only once—and scathingly reviewed—in 1972, before a collector friend purchased it and donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it “remained largely invisible for almost thirty years,” according to MoMA curator Quentin Bajac.