In his latest book, titled “Early Work,” the renowned photographer revisits the bold black-and-white images he took between 1960 and 1965

Ella Feldman - Daily Correspondent

September 24, 2025 10:14 a.m.

Stephen Shore’s parents on a corner in Rhinebeck, New York Stephen Shore via Mack Books Early Work, a new book by American photographer Stephen Shore, technically features Shore’s own photography. But when he looks at it, “it’s almost like an out-of-body experience,” he tells New York magazine’s Christopher Bonanos.

That’s because Shore, 77, doesn’t remember taking the vast majority of the previously unpublished photos included in his latest book. They were all taken when he was between 12 and 17.

It was Shore’s studio manager who brought the photographer’s attention to his own teenage output, printing a stack of his black-and-white photos of New York City streets taken in the early ’60s on a 35-millimeter camera and presenting it to him.

“I thought they were amazing,” Shore tells the New York Times’ Arthur Lubow. “It puts me in this awkward position of talking about my work in the third person and saying it’s amazing.”

Throughout his adult career, Shore became known for his landscapes of American infrastructure, frequently shooting highways, cars, gas pumps and billboards. His compositions often lacked people, giving them a still-life quality. He pioneered the use of color photography in the ’70s when it was still considered kitschy—the terrain of glossy magazines and family photographs, not art, per many critics at the time.

Fun fact: Stephen Shore at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1971, Shore was just 24 when he landed a major solo exhibition of his black-and-white photography at the Met in New York City.

But in his teenage years, people were often at the center of his photographs. He managed to capture New Yorkers in intimate moments—men in deep conversation near a “no smoking” sign; a young woman adjusting her partner’s collar on a park bench; a diner gazing out the window of a coffee shop, seemingly lost in a daydream. He brought his lens boldly close to his subjects, who sometimes stared right back, fully aware that they were being photographed.

“No one I can recall ever had a reaction to it. No one said, ‘Go away,’” Shore tells New Yorkmagazine.

The collection shows a fascination with the city itself. New Yorkers will recognize Greenwich Village, Midtown and the Upper East Side, where Shore grew up, across the photographs. In one striking image, the heads of two women in the middle of a conversation sit at the bottom of the frame, which is much more concerned with the six-story building behind them.

At age 6, Shore was given a Kodak Darkroom kit. Though he doesn’t remember having taken most of the images in Early Work, he does remember how he developed them: in a makeshift darkroom in his parents’ Upper East Side bathroom.

Shore can’t remember anyone brushing him off when he took their photo as a teenager. Stephen Shore via Mack Books Looking at the images, Shore recognizes his own curiosity, he tells the Guardian’s Charlotte Jansen.

“I see a photographer observing the people and the city, observing their inner state, how they interact, looking at social and cultural meanings,” he says. “People who are drawn to the medium of translating the world into an image tend to be fascinated by the world.”

One image foreshadows the subject matter that would later enthrall Shore for much of his career. It depicts a corner in Rhinebeck, a town in upstate New York, and centers a number of signs: a two-way traffic sign, a department store sign, and signs advertising cigars and ice cream. At the bottom of the frame, a couple looks directly at the lens—Shore’s parents, per the Guardian. Although he now lives near this site, “I had no idea I had been there before,” he tells the publication*.*

At the end of Early Work, a series of pictures hint at what would be Shore’s first big break. Before he captured his colorful Americana scenes, Shore made a name for himself taking pictures at the Factory, Andy Warhol’s legendary art studio and in-crowd hangout.

This image may have been taken in Washington Square Park, Shore tells New Yorkmagazine. Stephen Shore via Mack Books At a screening, Shore and Warhol struck up a friendship, despite their nearly 20-year age difference. The final photographs in Shore’s latest book are from his first day at the Factory, where he would go on to take photos of regulars like Edie Sedgwick and the Velvet Underground.

Despite his early success, Shore sold his Factory pictures for as little as $125, per the Guardian. He made a living through teaching. Since 1982, Shore has directed the photography department at Bard College in upstate New York, where he’s “taught every generation from X to Z,” he tells the Guardian.

Early Workcaptures a version of New York that Shore’s youngest students—and today’s teenagers—aren’t familiar with.

“The city is crowded now, but people don’t hang out in the same way,” he tells the Guardian. “People were out on the street experiencing each other, engaging with each other and feeling free to roam the city, not scrolling through TikTok.”

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