The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1969–1979
July 24 - September 28, 2008
Biographical Landscape offers an opportunity to revisit the works of Stephen Shore, one of the most prominent and influential American photographers to emerge in the last half-century. Focusing on Uncommon Places—Shore’s essential series on the American vernacular landscape produced between 1973 and 1982, Biographical Landscape provides an opportunity to reexamine this work in the context of his broader oeuvre, unearthing the conceptual underpinnings that inform his work throughout.What makes this work transcend the ordinariness of the subject matter is Shore’s unsurpassed artistry and technical skill as a photographer, coupled with his unique vision of each location that he documents. Quintessentially American scenes are transformed into uncommon places that seem frozen in space and time. The viewer of a Shore photograph is seduced by the colors, the density of information, and the everyday familiarity of the locations.
Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, has organized this traveling exhibition and produced the accompanying publications.
Listen to Stephen Shore’s interview with Paul Kosidowski from WUWM’s Lake Effect program
Read the article about Stephen Shore on the NPR website
STEPHEN SHORE (American, b. 1947)
U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973
Digital C-print
25 x 29”
©Stephen Shore, Courtesy of the artist and Aperture Foundation, Inc.
Turn the Pages Slowly
Rare Books and Manuscripts from the Haggerty Collection
August 22-December 7, 2008
This exhibition, drawn primarily from the Haggerty’s permanent collection, features rare books and manuscripts from the 14th through 20th centuries. Focusing on devotional texts, the exhibition includes a 19th century Koran, medieval Books of Hours and antiphonals (choral books). Individual leaves from French, English and Italian breviaries, Bibles and Books of Hours are highlighted, as well. The exhibition also includes facsimiles of medieval Haggadot. The elaborate illustrations, illuminations and calligraphy found in these early texts remind the contemporary reader of the laborious processes involved in ancient bookmaking. In addition to the preparation of parchment, the formulation of pigments and the binding of pages, there was also the grueling work of the scribe:
“The labor of the scribe is the refreshment of the reader: the former weakens the body, the latter profits the mind. Whoever you may be, therefore, who profit by this work, do not forget the laboring one who made it, so that God, thus invoked, will overlook your sins. Amen. Because one who does not know how to write thinks it no labor. I will describe it for you, if you want to know how great is the burden of writing: it mists the eyes, it curves the back, it breaks the belly and the ribs, it fills the kidneys with pain, and the body with all kinds of suffering. Therefore, turn the pages slowly, reader, and keep your fingers well away from the pages, for just as a hailstorm ruins the fecundity of the soil, so the sloppy reader destroys both the book and the writing. For as the last port is sweet to the sailor, so the last line to the scribe. Explicit, thanks be to God.”*
An essay by Dr. Wanda Zemler-Cizewski (Associate Professor, Department of Theology, Marquette University), will accompany the exhibition. Dr. Zemler-Cizewski has done extensive research on the Haggerty’s collection of manuscripts. Books have generously been loaned to the Haggerty for this exhibition from UWM’s Division of Archives and Special Collections and Nashotah House.
*Comments by the scribe Florentius of Valeranica (10th century)
Leaf from a Breviary
Italian, 15th century
Ink, gold leaf, tempera on parchment
72.17
Haggerty Museum of Art
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Joan Pick
Turn the Pages Slowly: Rare Books and Manuscripts from the Haggerty Collection exhibition catalogue PDF
Old Masters from the Haggerty: Re-seeing the Collection
Ongoing
FRANCESCO TREVISANI (Italian, 1651-1746) 59.5 |
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