I spent some time tonight looking at Uncommon Places. Stephen Shore's seminal photo collection of America in the 1970s. His photographs are raw; they lay bare the country's soul as it struggled through a brutal recession and war. The juxtaposition between what we see today and what those images show couldn't be more stark. Then: bleakness, empty streets, soul less vacant stares among his subjects. Today: we are suffering through an even more brutal recession and war, yet a visitor would be hard pressed to see it in the vitality and hum of our cities. For people who believe that today's challenges are unprecedented; a quick historical study of our not too distant past would be beneficial. Shore was very young when he embarked on his journey; ironically, it is usually youth that see the truth. Maybe it is that they are still willing to rock the boat where where older, more jaded people aren't.
I'm also struck by the photos in that they show a period of fundamental transition. You can see the basic building blocks of today's America, yet in towns across the country the norm was still the dying lifestyle of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The period of time that Shore documented so clearly truly foretells the future. It it isn't pretty. But it is brilliant.
I saw some of Shore's work at the Whitney in New York City a few years ago. I keep going back to it because, as someone who was an impressionable child in the 1970s, I have a tendency to glamorize the period. The truth is that brutal racisim, sexism, economic and political dispair and homophobia dominated the landscape. Shore's images, without trying, document the truth. Everyone should take a look at them.
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