Assessment 1: a series of seemingly banal and quotidian spaces that have some common abstract quality

Practitioner: Stephen Shore

The practitioner Stephen Shore that I researched for this assessment was to analyze his technique “a series of seemingly banal and quotidian spaces that have some common abstract quality”. This mean a series of photos that are seemingly boring and ordinary spaces that share a common nonrepresentational quality. Stephen Shore, born in 1947, is an American photographer that is best known for his photographic work for the past forty-five years and has published over 25 books of Stephen Shore’s photographs that has been published (Stephenshore.net n.d), one of them is his famous ‘American Surfaces’ series. According to Widewalls, Stephen’s photos, like the technique described, ‘turned the ordinary world into art’ (Martinique, E. 2017). Because it is his intention to use objects that are around our life, some are even ignorable things as the center of his photos, he brings those photos into a work of art, he intended to make his photos become natural like an “actor who’s trained to move in a completely natural way fills the theater with the presence of attention” (The Museum of Modern Art 2018).

Stephen Shore’s ‘American surface’ series, which he took during his road trip from New York to Texas in the 70s, he captured his experiences like a visual diary. In one of his interview with GUP magazine, Stephen mentioned about how he created the series by taking a picture that “felt less mediated by convention”. Whenever he thinks of that, he would take a screenshot of his field of vision. As his reference, he wanted to see ‘What does looking look like? What is the experience of seeing like?’ and use it to put a picture together. (Matthews, K.O. 2016)

Based on that, I tried to mimic “American surfaces” series from my house to university. Mostly I find myself exploring to new environment ever since I set foot to Australia and get curious to the point of getting lost. Despite taking a lot of pictures out of interest, I only selected a fraction of pictures I took around my university. I make use of my field of vision and see the city, looking at a common object like a street sign, mail postbox, bicycles and make it as my photo main object, the background will be of architectural of the city. I walked around the city and whenever I stopped to look at something, I took my camera out. Then I imagined the photo from my mind and when I think the time is right, I snapped the photo through the lens of my Iphone 6s. That is how I applied this technique to my work through Stephen Shore examples.

Bibliography:

The Museum of Modern Art 2018, Stephen Shore | HOW TO SEE the photographer with Stephen Shore, video recording, Youtube, viewed July 4, 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T029CTSO0IE>

Matthews, K.O. 2016, What looking looks like: An interview with Stephen Shore, GUP Magazine, August 31st, viewed July 5, 2018, <http://www.gupmagazine.com/articles/what-looking-looks-like-an-interview-with-stephen-shore>

Martinique, E. 2017, Sixty Years of Stephen Shore's Ability to Turn Everyday Life into Art, Widewalls, viewed July 13, 2018, <https://www.widewalls.ch/stephen-shore-photography-moma/>

Stephenshore.net n.d, viewed July 11th, 2018, <http://stephenshore.net/bio.php?menu=info>