New Color refers to photographic practices since the 1970s that treat color not as decoration but as central to the production of meaning.
In 1970s America, color was raised from the gloss of advertising and tourism into a serious art-photography language for reading suburbs, roadsides, household goods, and asphalt. Around Eggleston and Shore, color carried the temperature and vulgarity of everyday life.
New Color's claim was that the color and vulgarity of everyday American life — the suburb, the roadside, the supermarket — were not beneath art photography but its proper subject, and that color was the right tool for that reading.
New Color refers to photographic practices since the 1970s that treat color not as decoration but as central to the production of meaning.*1
On this site, photographers connected to New Color appear mainly in 1980–1990s, often overlapping with Documentary.*2
New Color often overlaps with Documentary. Reading those pages together makes it easier to see where method, institution, or critical language begins to diverge.*4
Martin Parr photographed British seaside resorts, domestic interiors, shopping, tourism, and food with saturated color and close-range flash. Working from the background of …
American photographer, born in 1947. Historical significance: Shore is important because he helped shift color photography into the center of art-photographic discourse and …
American photographer, born in 1938. Historical significance: Meyerowitz is significant because he helped move color from marginal or commercial association into the center of …
American photographer, painter, and sculptor, born in 1936 and died in 2016. Historical significance: Christenberry matters because he demonstrated how a local and repeating …
American photographer, born in 1944. Historical significance: he is important because he showed how color, large format, and documentary observation could be combined into a …