U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon
Stephen Shore American
Not on view
This photograph succinctly demonstrates the post-Romantic perspective on American landscape that Shore shared with the other photographers associated with the "New Topographics" in the mid-1970s. Rather than the majestic views produced by Timothy O'Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Minor White (who was Shore's teacher), Shore gives us an image of nature occluded by its own representation. An ironic commentary on "authentic' natural experience, this photograph also displays Shore's impeccable color sense—which, along with that of a few other photographers in the 1970s—pulled color photography out of its exile in the commercial world and into the realm of serious art.
