Stephen Shore – Steel Town | Virtual Book Launch

We're delighted to announce that Perimeter is the official Australian partner for the virtual launch of Stephen Shore – Steel Town. In collaboration with MACK (London), we will be live-streaming Stephen Shore and Jack Self in conversation at 7pm, Wednesday June 16 from this page. Following the talk, we'll be making ten special Launch Packs available from 8pm, immediately following the launch discussion. 

LAUNCH PACKS
The Launch Pack includes a copy of Stephen Store – Steel Town and a MACK 10 Year Anniversary tote.
Available to purchase from 8pm (AEST), Wednesday June 16
Buy here (select the Launch Pack option)
Only ten available

To celebrate the launch, we will also be offering free domestic shipping on all MACK titles for 24 hours (7pm, Wednesday June 16 – 7pm, Thursday June 17). Enter the code 'MACK' on checkout.

ARTIST TALK – MACK LIVE
Stephen Shore joins architect and author Jack Self to discuss Steel Town, Shore’s revelatory document of the American Rust Belt in 1977. They discuss the turbulent historical moment the project depicts as well as the history of Shore’s own process and photography’s capacity for illuminating our past, present, and future.

Premieres 7pm (AEST), Wednesday June 16. Sign up for a reminder here.

ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1977, Stephen Shore travelled across New York state, Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio – an area in the midst of industrial decline that would eventually be known as the Rust Belt. Shore met steelworkers who had been thrown out of work by plant closures and photographed their suddenly fragile world: deserted factories, lonely bars, dwindling high streets, and lovingly decorated homes. Across these images, a prosperous middle America is seen teetering on the precipice of disastrous decline. Hope and despair alike lurk restlessly behind the surfaces of shop fronts, domestic interiors, and the fraught expressions of those who confront Shore’s 4x5” view camera.

Originally commissioned as an extended photographic report for Fortune Magazine in the vein of Walker Evans, Shore’s multifaceted investigation has only gained political salience in the intervening years. Shore’s subjects – including workers, union leaders, and family members – had voted for Jimmy Carter the year preceding his visit; now he found them disillusioned with the new president, fated to leave behind the Democratic party and become the ‘Reagan Democrats’. Through unfailingly engrossing images by one of the world’s acknowledged masters, Steel Town provides an immersive portrait of a time and place whose significance to our own is ever more urgent.

128 pages, 23.5 x 30cm, embossed hardback, MACK (London).