Stephen Shore is basically the crown prince of color photography.

If Robert Frank and Walker Evans are considered the fathers of roadtrip photography, Stephen Shore is the crown prince. Born in New York City in 1947, he started practicing photography at the young age of six. It’s not quite like when your kid takes your phone; from an early age, Shore revealed a strong ability to create meaning and absorb inspirations. One of his most prized presents was Evans’ American Photographs at age eleven; three years later, Shore’s own photographs would be purchased for the Museum of Modern Art by Edward Steichen. Before he was legally an adult, he was making the rest of us aspiring-to-be-successful artists feel that sweet, sweet envy. Once he turned eighteen, he scored an assistantship at the Factory under the one and only Andy Warhol, where he was able to learn about and experiment with documentary and conceptual art. With this kind of resume, it isn’t any wonder that he was able to have a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at age twenty-four, a first for a living photographer.

During the 1970s, a revolutionary exhibition in the contemporary photography world, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, was on view at the Museum of Modern Art. Before this exhibition, landscape photography usually consisted of the traditional picturesque views of nature, like those you may see in national parks. New Topographics, however, showed the changing industrial landscape in a very mundane and formalist perspective. Shore’s work fit perfectly within this group, where he would use color photography to document the everyday world around him. These images did not fit the traditional fine art photographic ideal since they were so ordinary, but because they are a contemplative and carefully composed study of Shore’s experiences, they have become an essential part of the contemporary art canon. Shore is most well known for his series of roadtrip photographs. His most renowned series, Uncommon Places, is a series of images created during a roadtrip across the country during the 1970s. While these images still show the everyday views of Shore’s life, they explore a deeper understanding of the American dream and the stories places can tell. Each image has striking uses of color, taken with a large format camera, which allows us to see so much detail viewers can be transported into each place. Some images hold the sadness and isolation of the road, others have hope and love, and many have a sense of humor and irony. Shore’s work made taking photographs of your daily lunch or a parking lot not only acceptable, but Instagrammable.

Stephen Shore continues to make work and educate future generations of photographers. He has received many accolades, including retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenehim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and the publication of monographs of his previous series. Shore is currently the Director of the Photography Program and the Susan Weber Professor in the Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he has worked since 1982. Next time you take time to look and photograph what others may see as mundane, remember Shore!