American Surfaces: From road trip minutiae to meaningful art

Stephen Shore was born in 1947 to successful, business-owning Jewish parents. He grew up a privileged only child in the Upper East Side of New York and got introduced to photography at a young age. At the age of 6, his uncle gifted him dark room equipment which he used to develop family photographs until he began taking his own photos at 9 when his parents bought him a 35 mm camera. Already by the age of 14, he began getting recognized for his work on a small scale. After meeting with Edward Steichen, the Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, he sold his first three photographs as Steichen was impressed by his work [1]. 

His best-known work is his photobook called American Surfaces which is a collection of hundreds of photographs he took while on a road trip across America in 1972 and 1973. Despite his early beginnings in photo development, Shore talks about how his photos at New York’s Light Gallery were not printed by himself or even in a professional lab. Rather, he sent his film to Kodak and took the prints Kodak gave him, not agonizing over color correction, and arranged them in a 3×3 grid on the wall, breaking every rule about presentation of art photography at the time. He said in the same interview with Phaidon that his composition was “like seeing” with the subject often placed in the middle of the photo [2]. 

This different approach, compared to the work of photographers like Strand, Kertesz, Winogrand, and Friedlander displayed in the same gallery, received varying criticism. Shore published to his website a “vitriolic” review by the Village Voice in 1971 that says that Shore’s concepts were “so lightweight that only their translation into objects to which we attach aesthetic significance could give them enough heft so that they might be taken seriously,” while other critics suggested that his work was “unnecessary” and “dispensable” because they were just a means of documenting the photographer’s concepts which could’ve just been written down [3].

Still, Weston Neff, the Met’s photography curator at the time, bought the whole 200 print set to gift to the Met’s permanent collection. Nan Goldin also told Shore that American Surfaces left a significant impression on her as a student [2]. 

American Surfaces deals with photographing the seemingly mundane, such as plates with food, simple faces, and dirty toilet seats, across America to reveal an intimate and well-rounded portrait of Shore’s trip across America. These photos speak to the average American, showing the small bits of life that everyone experiences but never really gets represented in art.

This theme is what I will be exploring on my own short road trip from Ann Arbor to North Carolina, stopping along the way to document the little stories found in everyday scenes. 

Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Andy Warhol, Stephen Shore allowed everything that passed by him to be interpreted as art. Shooting with color film and a 35 mm camera, Shore photographed raw and natural images that mimicked exactly what he saw: people, streets, gas stations, food, etc. on his road trip from New York to Texas. 

Shore’s method of photographing as seeing is discussed in the interview below, Stephen Shore: Taking photographs that “feel like seeing”, from which I drew inspiration and learned more about how to replicate his perspective in photos.

In an attempt to create my own photos inspired by Stephen Shore, I went on a weekend-long road trip from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Maggie Valley, North Carolina, stopping in small towns along the way to document ordinary things with the potential to be extraordinary I saw along the way.

Although parts of my process were different from Shore’s, for example, I used a digital camera rather than 35 mm film, I tried to stay true to Shore’s methods by capturing photos as I see the scenes in front of me: shooting at eye level, in color, and with ordinary subjects centered in the frame with a focus on stillness.

The subjects I planned to include were roads and highways, plates of food, public restrooms, and people I encountered. In the end, the bulk of my photos were of buildings along with storefronts, gas stations, food, signs, and other things I saw on my trip.

Shore’s subjects and compositions were fairly simple, but the vivid colors that he used allowed the simple images to capture the spirit of the people he saw and the places he visited. I chose to feature the two images below because their colors caught my eye when flipping through his book. 

I didn’t expect my individual photos to be impressive in any way, but I did hope to give a well-rounded and true look at my road trip through the entirety of my collection in a way that pays homage to Shore’s American Surfaces.

Through trying to recreate my own interpretation of Stephen Shore’s style in his photobook American Surfaces, I captured almost 100 photos and narrowed them down to 51 photos which can all be viewed in my gallery at the bottom of this page. These photos 

My approach for taking pictures evolved from my original plan outlined in my methodology section. A theme that I noticed a lot in my first interaction with American Surfaces was grimy or dirty surfaces. In my original plan, I wanted to capture some of these surfaces, expecting primarily to see dirty toilets at gas stations. 

I didn’t end up photographing as many dirty images as Shore did. I don’t know if American towns are just a little cleaner nowadays than in the ’70s, or if it’s just not in my nature to point a camera at filth. I did take two photos of “dirty” subjects, however. One of cigarettes near two benches and the other, below, of a bike parked chaotically next to a pile of trash bags.

The above image was taken behind a building next to the dumpsters. I chose to keep the bicycle in frame rather than get closer and get only the trash bags because of the greater story it tells. I really wanted to capture at least one dirty image, although I don’t think it represents Shore’s style as well as my other photos. 

The most challenging part of trying to take photos like Stephen Shore was trying to recognize what was mundane, as I categorized his subjects previously, but also worthy of taking a photo. I got through this challenge by letting loose and just taking pictures of what caught my eye and not worrying so much about what exactly Shore would have noticed. 

This method worked for me. The two slideshows below show the photos that I took (top) lined up with Shore’s own photos (bottom) that I thought paired well. I took the picture of newspaper stands outside of a gas station because I liked the colors. After looking back through American Surfaces, I found Shore’s photo of condom dispensers which immediately reminded me of my own. 

Although going out and taking pictures with Shore’s style in mind was the goal, this process of simply taking my own photos and later finding similarities with Shore’s work was common for most of the images in the two slideshows.

One of my favorite parts of this project was the excuse I had to take my time, stopping in small towns and even dining in during the drive to and from North Carolina. Typically, on a long drive, I’ll only stop for drive-thru meals or to fuel up. This project allowed me to explore what I would usually consider boring small towns and appreciate them for their character. With Shore’s plentiful images of his meals in mind, I decided to actually get out of my car when I stopped for food and photographed my meals before and after eating. 

The photo below is from a stop at Burger King in Kentucky. It was against my own judgment to leave my sudoku and crumpled napkins on the table for the photo, but in the style of Shore, I left them in.

American Surfaces features quite a few shots of people, most commonly as close-ups of one to three individuals. Although I did pass some interesting people, it was out of my comfort zone to ask strangers for a close-up.

Inside of a firework store, I told my boyfriend to smile for a picture while I was still getting used to the camera with no intention of using it for this project. The photo, below, ended up actually being something and lining up well with Shore’s own photo of a woman in Toledo, Ohio standing in front of boxes of cigarettes (see below). 

In both pictures above, the subjects are roughly centered in the frame with colored packages stacked behind them, creating an entire background for the images with little negative space. Although some of my pictures ended up being a happy surprise like the one above, I took others with intention.

The photos below (top left and top right) caught my eye while I was looking through American Surfaces, so I had a general idea to take pictures of signs in this style. I was very impressed with what I was able to create because I think I did a good job of mimicking Shore’s style in the other two photos below (bottom left and bottom right)

The photos above were some of my favorites from all of the shots I got. I think these go best with the title I chose for this project: From road-trip minutiae to meaningful art. A simple fast food chain or liquor store sign is something everyone passes on road trips, but by using Shore’s composition for these photos, they really look like art to me.

The entirety of the photos I took on my road trip from Michigan to North Carolina inspired by Stephen Shore’s American Surfaces can be seen below.

After going through the process of taking photos in Stephen Shore’s style from American Surfaces, I’ve begun reconsidering my thesis that I initially proposed. Before taking photos myself, I claimed that Shore’s subject matter was mundane, implying that his photos were objectively mundane. I am now starting to realize how mundane is really subjective in photography. 

Now, I think Shore took photos of unfamiliar scenes. Sure, a toilet, a fridge, or a plain building seems familiar in theory, but after actually heading out of town and going places I’ve never been, even the most familiar concepts felt so unfamiliar and begged me to take photos. 

In addition to my thesis, my whole view of the project changed. I went out thinking “Okay, let me take pictures of boring stuff” but nothing boring caught my eye. What caught my eye were things I felt were worth picturing, and as it turns out, my pictures lined up with Shore’s pretty well, so I have to assume he didn’t think the subjects were boring either. I think having the perspective of a visitor in a town inherently makes “boring” scenes interesting. 

As discussed in the Photo Analysis section, I didn’t catch any dirty images as Shore did so often. Shore took his photos in the ‘70s whereas all of my photos were taken in November of 2022. It’s possible that I overlooked certain dirty scenes, but I think it also might be true that since the 20th century American cities have just gotten cleaner. 

Overall, I was able to gain a better understanding of Shore’s work and his process by trying to recreate it. During my trip, I was able to relate to Shore as a traveler or visitor to different towns in America.

[1] “Stephen Shore Photography, Bio, Ideas.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/shore-stephen/.

[2] “Interview: Stephen Shore: ‘I Didn’t like Getting Criticism but It Didn’t Cause Me to Doubt What I Was Doing’.” PHAIDON, https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2020/april/24/interview-stephen-shore-i-didn-t-like-getting-criticism-but-it-didn-t-cause-me-to-doubt-what-i-was-doing/.

[3] Coleman, A.D. “Latent Image.” The Village Voice, 1 Apr. 1971.

[4] San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. (2019, April 22). Stephen Shore: Taking photographs that “feel like seeing.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5xAxqbtz9o

[5] Shore, Stephen. American Surfaces. Phaidon, 2008.