“THE STUFF OF AMERICAN SURFACES HAS BECOME THE STUFF OF CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY”: FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY STEPHEN SHORE

SHORE, Stephen. American Surfaces. (New York): Phaidon, (2005). Square quarto, original black paper-covered boards, original dust jacket, original “Kodak” envelope. $850.

First edition of Shore’s remarkable photobook, representing “the central idea— in contemporary photography” (Parr & Badger), signed by Shore on the half title, with 313 color plates and the scarce “Kodak Color Finishing Envelope.”

“Stephen Shore burst into the skies of photography in the early 70s, dazzling observers with carefully conceived color landscape photographs… Shore’s pictures are captivating, balanced objects of considerable visual complexity” (New York Times). “American Surfaces was published in 2005 from work made in the early 1970s. The photographs and the publication represent a central idea— possible the central idea— in contemporary photography. That is, the notion of the diary/snapshot album… The stuff of American Surfaces has become the stuff of contemporary photography, but it was Shore, along with William Eggleston, who at the beginning of the 1970s brilliantly developed the language of Walker Evans and Robert Frank in color… mak[ing] the sophisticated snapshot not just an American language but a universal one for our modern times” (Parr & Badger II:295). Introduction by Bob Nickas. First edition, released in the facsimile of a “Kodak Color Finishing Envelope.” See Roth, 228.

An exceptionally fine copy, scarce signed.