In 1982 Aperture published photographer Stephen Shore’s monograph Uncommon Places, a photographic portrait of the American vernacular landscape. The book went on to become a definitive classic, greatly influencing a generation of photographers and considered by many one of the most important photography books of its time. The book was rereleased with previously unseen material in 2004 under the title Uncommon Places: The Complete Works and an accompanying exhibition Biographical Landscape: The Photography of Stephen Shore was launched, touring galleries and museums around the world. Now after six years of touring, Biographical Landscape will make its final and thirteenth stop as part of a survey show entitled Stephen Shore and the New Dusseldorf Photography at NRW-Forum in Dusseldorf, Germany this fall.

When Uncommon Places was republished by Aperture in 2004 the new edition included extensive texts by noted curator and critic Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen and writer Lynne Tillman and was accompanied by images from Shore’s series American Surfaces as well as from his series Amarillo: Tall in Texas. The exhibition Biographical Landscape which complemented this comprehensive second run of the monograph and which has been integrated into a new exhibition by NRW-forum, also includes excerpts from several different bodies of work by Shore including an excerpt from American Surfaces, Shore’s early work shot on a 35mm camera, Shore’s edition of postcards from his work Amarillo, Texas and a collection of photographs featured in Shore’s 1972 exhibit All the Meat You Can Eat. The exhibition is primarily comprised of a selection of 25 prints from Uncommon places as well as twenty one prints from later bodies of work.

New exhibition Stephen Shore and the New Dusseldorf Photography considers the influence of both Shore’s pioneering of color photography and Bernd and Hilla Becher’s innovative typology influenced images on German artists who studied with Bernd Becher between the years of 1976 and 1996. Along with Shore’s bodies of work this exhibition will include works by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Volker Dohne, Axel Hutte, Andreas Gursky, Claus Goedicke and more.

Stephen Shore and the New Dusseldorf Photography
On view September 11th, 2010 – January 11th, 2011

NRW-Forum
Ehrenhof 2
40479 Dusseldorf, Germany

Click here to purchase Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places: The Complete Works