The season is busy for Stephen Shore, pioneer of color, eternal student of photography and peerless landscape photographer. In addition to a major retrospective at the Fondation MAPFRE in Madrid, two of his works are on display for an exhibition at the 303 Gallery in New York.
The first is a series of shot in Israel and the West Bank, where uninhabited landscapes meet scenes of modern quotidian life, and tender portraits become entangled with images of aestheticized propaganda and the charge of architecture in a space of conflict. Shore’s interest in daily life, in the landscape itself as a way to interpret a sociological climate a baseline theme in all his work – here takes on a different type of potency due to the critical nature of the living situation. In an a piece such as Sderot, Israel, September 14, 2009, a photograph of a hand pointing at a map is another way of considering the contentious nature of territories.
The second body of work presented in this exhibition consists of images shot in Ukraine, in and around the homes and villages of Holocaust survivors. Another subject with an emotional charge perhaps unequalled in terms of acute sensation, each image becomes a type of reliquary replete not only with the tragedy of the Holocaust, but with the tragic history of Ukraine itself. Shore’s compositions in these images are tighter and more controlled; colors and objects bristle with intimation of past events. In directly confronting these charged subjects, Shore subtly imposes his own order and logic on the landscape, continuing a tradition he created and has practiced for close to 50 years.
EXHIBITION
Stephen Shore
Jusqu’au 1er novembre 2014
303 Gallery
507 W 24th Street
New York
USA
