Stephen Shore and Uncommon Places

Every so often, you come across a book that doesn’t just change how you see photography, but how you see the world. For me, Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places is one of those books.

I still remember the first time I opened it. There was no fanfare, no dramatic introduction - just these quiet, almost ordinary scenes. A diner, a parking lot, a street corner. Nothing spectacular, and yet I couldn’t look away. Shore had taken the very fabric of everyday America and made it feel monumental, without ever making it grand.

What struck me most was the honesty of it. These weren’t images chasing perfection. They were simply there - clear, precise, and unashamedly ordinary. And in that ordinariness, I found a strange kind of beauty. I realised then that photography didn’t need to be about the extraordinary at all. It could be about the overlooked, the in-between, the things we walk past a hundred times without a second glance.

Shore’s large-format compositions gave everything equal weight: a Coke sign, the paint peeling on a wall, the way a shadow fell across a sidewalk. His colour work, too, was unapologetically matter-of-fact. Not romanticised, not overly stylised - just true. That was a revelation to me.

Looking back, I think Uncommon Places gave me permission. Permission to notice. To slow down. To treat the everyday as worthy of attention. When I walk through Lincoln with a camera, I often find myself channelling Shore - standing a little longer at a street corner, noticing how the light falls on a row of bins, how a shop sign leans just slightly off centre.

There’s one photograph in the book that stays with me more than any other: Lookout Hotel, Ogunquit, Maine (July 16, 1974). It’s not dramatic, not iconic in the conventional sense. But every time I see it, I’m reminded that seeing is an act of generosity. That the world doesn’t need to be rearranged to be beautiful.

Lookout Hotel, Ogunquit, Maine (July 16, 1974). Stephen Shore ©️

Uncommon Places isn’t just a collection of photographs to me - it’s a way of thinking, almost a philosophy. Stephen Shore taught me that the “unremarkable” is worth remarking on. That every place, no matter how ordinary, holds something uncommon if you’re willing to look.

We all have photographic heroes - people who alter the course of how we see, not just how we shoot. Stephen Shore is one of mine. And I’d love to know - who are yours?

For more of Stephen Shore's work: http://www.stephenshore.net/