Stephen Shore: Early Work
At just six years old, Stephen Shore received a Kodak darkroom kit—an unexpected gift that sparked a lifelong fascination with photography. From that moment, he developed an intimate relationship with both the technical magic of the darkroom and the expressive potential of the camera. These tools became his means of exploring the intricacies and personalities of the world around him.
Early Work brings together, for the first time, a series of previously unseen photographs taken by Shore during his formative teenage years, from 1960 to 1965. This period of bold experimentation came just before his celebrated involvement with Andy Warhol’s Factory. The photographs in this collection reveal a young artist already fluent in the visual language of photography—thoughtful, perceptive, and deliberate in his approach to composition and subject matter.
Captured in and around New York City, these images reflect not only the vibrancy of the era but also hint at the enduring themes that would come to define Shore’s career.
More than a historical archive, Early Work is a compelling glimpse into the early vision of a photographer whose instinctive sensitivity and curiosity were evident from the very beginning.
About the Author
Stephen Shore has been a central figure in contemporary photography for over four decades, with his work featured extensively in major publications and international exhibitions. He made history as the first living photographer since Alfred Stieglitz to be given a solo exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. His photographs have also been showcased at institutions such as the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art mounted a comprehensive retrospective covering the full arc of his artistic journey. Shore has been honored with fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His groundbreaking shows at Light Gallery in the early 1970s played a key role in elevating color photography and revitalizing the use of the large-format camera in documentary practice.
More than twenty-five volumes of his work have been published, including Uncommon Places: The Complete Works, American Surfaces, Stephen Shore (Phaidon), Survey, Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971–1979, and Stephen Shore: Elements. His influential book The Nature of Photographs (Phaidon) explores the visual language and structure of photographic images.
Shore is represented by 303 Gallery in New York and Sprüth Magers in London and Berlin. Since 1982, he has directed the Photography Program at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he holds the title of Susan Weber Professor in the Arts.
