Reevaluating Silence and Visibility: The Philosophical Significance of Republishing Stephen Shore's Steel Town

Abstract

Stephen Shore's Steel Town features a collection of his photographs of the Rust Belt, taken for the Fortune magazine, and now given visibility to Shore as a photographer after 40 years of silence. Some images had been previously published, while others appeared for the first time in Steel Town. This study interprets these images, drawing on the images of Fortune and Shore’s earlier work, and analyzes the challenges he faced in photographing the Rust Belt. It examines the system of photographic power, ethics, and perspective, exploring how these factors, as well as the changing conditions of American society, contributed to the reappearance of these images forty years later. By situating Steel Town within modern philosophical discourse, the study highlights Photography as a cultural trace, which has the ability to respond to political, social, cultural, and philosophical dimensions across time. A paradigm-shift in Shore’s perspective evoked the insider-outsider dichotomy in him and allowed him to let out the information through his photographs. Additionally, it underscores the potential for photography to offer both theoretical depth and practical analysis, suggesting that future scholarship should focus on the intersection of photography, philosophy, and the social sciences.