CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/25/2017

Banality and lack of artifice: Stephen Shore

“In their banality and lack of artifice, [Stephen] Shore’s pictures seem to fly in the face of typical food photography, which always seeks to beautify the meal being photographed,” Quentin Bajac writes in MoMA’s superb new retrospective catalog. “In contrast, the food on display here—that of travelers and people in a hurry, in cafeterias motels drive-ins, diners, planes—is repetitive, unsophisticated, and rarely appetizing. It epitomizes generic American food during a time when ‘fast food,’ a term that entered the dictionary in 1951, was rapidly expanding throughout the United States.” Featured image is Breakfast, Trail’s End Restaurant, Kanub, Utah, August 10, 1973.