American Surfaces

American Surfaces by Stephen Shore. 2013 paperback edition in fine condition. Large format. Slight shelf wear. No internal markings. The dust jacket  has a soft crease to bottom front, now in removable protective sleeve.

About American Surfaces

So, Shore’s images from his travels across America in 1972-73 are considered the benchmark for documenting the banal. This is the original edition of American Surfaces, published in 2005. As a result, it brings together 320 photographs of the original edit and sequence. American Surfaces is a photographic version of a road movie, and in that tradition it has at times a downbeat mood: its director/protagonist is often drawn to the bleak and the mundane. Frequently nothing seems to be happening. Or something wholly unremarkable has been recorded. And yet there is tremendous beauty here—beauty found where it's least expected—as well as humor and pathos. In conclusion, American Surfaces is a meditation on what it means to be in the world. On what it means to point a camera in one direction rather than another, and no matter what is being recorded its subject is always photography itself.