Stephen Shore and Jeff Rosenheim discuss the art of Bernd & Hilla Becher

Stephen Shore has spent his career as an artist and educator thinking about vernacular traditions. He knew the artists Bernd and Hilla Becher personally and even showed alongside them in the 1975 landmark exhibition New Topographics. Join Shore and acclaimed guest speaker Jeff L. Rosenheim, Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for a lively conversation about the Bechers, the power of the vernacular, and its role in the development of the medium. Shore’s recent books will be available for purchase and signing following the talk.

About the Speakers

Stephen Shore‘s work has been widely published and exhibited for the past forty-five years. He was the first living photographer to have a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since Alfred Stieglitz, forty years earlier. He has also had solo shows at George Eastman House, Rochester; Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Jeu de Paume, Paris; and Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art opened a major retrospective spanning Shore’s entire career. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His series of exhibitions at Light Gallery in New York in the early 1970s sparked new interest in color photography and in the use of the view camera for documentary work. More than twenty-five books have been published of Stephen Shore’s photographs; his two most recent books are Modern Instances, a memoir published last year, and Topographies: Aerial Surveys of the American Landscape, both from MACK Books.

Jeff L. Rosenheim is Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and curator of the exhibition Bernd & Hilla Becher. His other recent exhibitions and publications include diane arbus: in the beginning; Irving Penn: Centennial; Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection; and Photography and the American Civil War.
 

Accessibility Information
Accessible seating is available at this event.

Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance. Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.
 

Support for Public Programs and Artist Talks at SFMOMA is provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Distinguished Lecture Series.

Major support for Bernd & Hilla Becher is provided by Randi and Bob Fisher and Wes and Kate Mitchell.

Meaningful support is provided by David and Roxanne Soward.