Greetings from Amarillo: Stephen Shore’s postcard play
This article is part of the USSO special series Resilience/Renewal: Shifting Landscapes in American Studies Greetings from Amarillo – “Tall in Texas” (1971) is a set of ten 3½x5½-inch postcards made by the American photographer Stephen Shore. Each card shows a landscape image of Amarillo’s built spaces: the sunned faces of public buildings, yawning intersections with motorists passing through. A saturated Texas sky crowns the streets and makes the metal frames of the cars glint. Shot using a Leica 35mm camera, the photographs are flattened by a grainy, almost thick, technicolour, which renders space as untraversable patterns of block and line. On the plain, off-white verso, information has been given and withheld. Sparse text includes Shore’s name, a box with the words ‘PLACE STAMP HERE’ stacked inside it, and details of the printing company, ‘Dexter Press, Inc’. But the postcards identify their unusual subjects with only their street addresses. Why […]