Blue Shores

Stephen Shore, Commercial Avenue, Cairo, Illinois, May 10, 1974, color photograph. Aperture, 2017.

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These photographs are, ostensibly, different: a blue, shuttered used-clothing store; a blue car parked on a street and a bank in the background; twenty blue Adirondack chairs scattered on a spacious green lawn; and, a blue-and-white-striped restaurant facade.

In each but the photograph with twenty chairs, windows figure inside the frame. The bank and car have windows; both storefronts do. But none is there to see through, as if transparent, none is what a photograph once was called, a window into the world. Instead, the windows are covered, partially blocked, or opaque.

Looking at the used-clothing store, I can imagine a story for it:

A twenty-four-year-old man standing in front of it. He’s just walked a few miles into the small city, because he