Lot Essay
In an interview with writer Lynn Tillman, Shore describes the transition from American Surfaces (1973) to Uncommon Places (1973-1979):
"After 'American Surfaces' I wanted to make larger prints than snapshot-size. The film Kodacolor made in 1972 and 1973 was so crude that larger prints fell apart. They became much too grainy. After doing a couple of trips with a 4x5, I was dissatisfied with the quality of the enlargements. There was an immediacy to the smaller prints that I wasn't seeing in the larger prints, so I decided to go to a larger format camera, the 8x10, which allowed me to do some pictures of the kind in 'American Surfaces' better than I could do before. But then doing the more cumbersome shots became cumbersome and akward. I remember shooting pancakes that I had for breakfast when I had to stand on top of the chair because the camera had to be so far from the pancakes to focus." (Uncommon Places: The Complete Works, p. 182)
"After 'American Surfaces' I wanted to make larger prints than snapshot-size. The film Kodacolor made in 1972 and 1973 was so crude that larger prints fell apart. They became much too grainy. After doing a couple of trips with a 4x5, I was dissatisfied with the quality of the enlargements. There was an immediacy to the smaller prints that I wasn't seeing in the larger prints, so I decided to go to a larger format camera, the 8x10, which allowed me to do some pictures of the kind in 'American Surfaces' better than I could do before. But then doing the more cumbersome shots became cumbersome and akward. I remember shooting pancakes that I had for breakfast when I had to stand on top of the chair because the camera had to be so far from the pancakes to focus." (Uncommon Places: The Complete Works, p. 182)