Second Street East & South Main Street, Kalispell, Montana

After achieving success at an early age—he sold three prints to the Museum of Modern Art at 14, photographed at Andy Warhol’s Factory at 17, and held a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 24—Stephen Shore took a new direction in his work with a series of cross-country road trips beginning in 1972. He explained, “I started photographing everyone I met, every meal, every toilet, every bed I slept in, the streets I walked on, the towns I visited.” With a deadpan appraisal of the built environment of modern America, Shore built a reputation as part of a generation of photographers who used color in an anticommercial fashion. The street corner in this image is unremarkable, yet Shore’s attention to the landscape—vernacular signs and architecture, patterns in the street and pavement—and muted color palette render the mundane significant.