Early Work

At the age of six, Stephen Shore received a Kodak Darkroom kit, a gift that unearthed a passion and inquisitiveness that would go on to define his entire life. Shore began to develop a unique relationship to the chemical alchemy of the darkroom and to the camera itself: a tool through which he would uncover the characters and complexities of the world around him. 

Early Work collects for the first time the entirely unseen photographs created during Shore’s early teenage years between 1960 and 1965, a period of rich experimentation that precedes his time working with Andy Warhol at The Factory. These sophisticated and ambitious images demonstrate Shore’s already-complex understanding of the photographic form, and the particular attention with which he approached his surroundings. It offers a unique record of the vibrant energy of New York in the early 1960s, and reveals the themes that provided a constant source of interest for the young photographer. 

Above all, Early Work offers an authoritative account of the innate sensibility with which Shore approached not only his craft but the world around him, from this early age. 

Includes a new essay by Stephen Shore