Uncommon Landscapes

On my twice-daily walks I always carry a small camera in case I spot something worth photographing. But my walks don’t vary much, and lately I feel like I’ve run out of photographic subjects. Or have I?

Not long ago I watched a You Tube video about the photography of Stephen Shore. The video was by an artist named Tatiana Hopper who produces interesting content about the history of photography and filmmaking. It was good to be reminded about the work of Stephen Shore. He was one of the participants in the influential New Topographics exhibition in 1975 which presented photographs of ordinary human-dominated landscapes across the United States, with subjects like industrial parks, gas stations, and housing developments. Shore was the only participant who photographed in color, and he is one of the pioneers of artistic color photography. The photo of his at right was taken in 1974, and was published in his major photo book from 1982, Uncommon Places. It is quite typical of his work: a muted color palette, a strong formal composition, with a sense of detachment from the landscape.

I am clearly quite attracted to this aesthetic, and wonder if it provides a template for photographing the ordinary landscape of this college town. But does an artistic movement from the 1970s still have relevance in 2025, in an age when hundreds of billions of photos have been posted to Instagram? Interestingly enough, between 2014 and 2024 Stephen Shore posted every day on Instagram before deciding after 10 years it was time to move on from the practice. As a general principle, Stephen Shore’s Instagram Photos Are Better Than Yours. There is something about spending decades arranging photos on the ground glass viewfinder of an 8” × 10” view camera that inexorably leads to a heightened sense of composition. Photography is very much a matter of looking closely.