Stephen Shore on a City’s Schizophrenia

I usually think of Stephen Shore as being a touch … tougher, less direct, less decisive-moment-y, than in this image of two Orthodox Jews adrift in the sex and commerce of 21st century Jerusalem, from his show at 303 Gallery in New York. But sometimes, the world offers itself up nearly pre-photographed, and how’s a poor shutterbug to resist?

Or maybe I’ve got that all wrong: It’s common knowledge that Orthodox men are hardly shiksa-sex averse, and they certainly don’t mind the ring of a cash register (at least, from a cash on Diamond Row). So maybe this shot really captures these lads in their element rather than out of it. Anyway it’s absurd (of me) to imagine that anyone alive today is any less “21st-century” than anyone else. There’s no spirit of the age beyond what’s constituted by all the separate little spirits living in it.

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