Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore
November 19, 2017–May 28, 2018

This is the first U.S. survey to encompass Stephen Shore’s career in photography, from the gelatin silver prints he made as a teenager to his current engagement with digital platforms. This major exhibition tracks the artist from his wunderkind beginnings—works made when he was just 14 years old were acquired by Edward Steichen, the Director of the Department of Photography at MoMA, and he had a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art when he was 24 years old—through his continual, restless interrogation of image making. The exhibition will include hundreds of photographic works, along with additional materials including books, ephemera, and objects.

Shore (American, b. 1947) has worked with many formats and mediums of photography, and this gathering of hundreds of his works will allow for a fuller understanding of the diversity of his output. The exhibition will feature historic and recent prints of black-and-white and color photographs, books, periodicals, films, portfolios, and digital works, including many that have never been published or exhibited, from his Conceptual projects, the American Surfaces and Uncommon Places series, his landscapes of the 1980s, commissions, and his recent explorations of Israel and Ukraine.

Shore’s first survey in New York in 10 years, this exhibition will both establish the artist’s full oeuvre in the context of his time—from his days at Andy Warhol’s Factory through the rise of American color photography and the transition to large-scale digital photography—and argue for his singular vision and uncompromising pursuit of photography’s possibilities.

Organized by Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator, with Kristen Gaylord, Beaumont & Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography, MoMA. Allianz is a partner of contemporary art at MoMA.

Major support for Stephen Shore is provided by The William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund and by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

Additional support is provided by the Annual Exhibition Fund.

Support for the publication is provided by the Jo Carole Lauder Publications Fund of The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.