The Gardens at Giverny: A View of Monet's World

A Colorful Photographic Tribute to the Gardens Celebrated in Monet's Paintings

Claude Monet found inspiration in the rose-covered trellises, the wild ramble of nasturtiums, and the idle drift of water lilies in the gardens of Giverny outside Paris. So, too, did Stephen Shore, who photographed the gardens one hundred years later, upon their painstaking restoration to the state they had enjoyed during Monet's lifetime.

Originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to photograph the renaissance of the gardens, Shore visited Giverny over a period of six years beginning in 1977. Going before dawn and leaving after dusk, visiting in different seasons, he came to know the gardens in all the moods and textures that nurtured Monet.

"With the sensitivity of a poet, Stephen Shore has given a new interpretation of this garden, which so enchanted Claude Monet," writes Gerald Van Der Kamp, the man in charge of spearheading the careful revival of Monet's beloved gardens. Shore's uncompromising fidelity to both the gardens' plenitude and his desire to present the abstract beauty of nature results in exquisitely serene photographs that express the essence of Giverny.

Stephen Shore is currently the Chair of the Division of the Arts and the Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.