Originally published in 1982, Stephen Shores legendary Uncommon Places has influenced a generation of photographers. Among the first artists to take colour beyond the domain of advertising and fashion photography, Shores large-format colour work on the American vernacular landscape stands at the root of what has become a vital photographic tradition over the past thirty years. Uncommon Places: The Complete Works is the definitive collection of this landmark series. An essay by noted critic and curator Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen and a conversation with Shore by fiction writer Lynne Tillman examine his methodology as they elucidate his roots in the pop and conceptual art movements of the late sixties and early seventies. The texts are illustrated with reproductions from Shores earlier series American Surfaces and Amarillo: Tall in Texas.


Stephen Shore was interested in photography from an early age. Self-taught, he received a photographic darkroom kit at age six. He began to use a 35mm camera three years later and made his first color photographs. At ten he received a copy of Walker Evans's book, American Photographs, which influenced him greatly. At age seventeen Shore met Andy Warhol and began to frequent War...