Let’s Go Out Tonight: On the Road — September 9, 2008

TIME CAPSULE It is easy to imagine that for 35 years, the souvenirs that photographer Stephen Shore collected during a cross-country road trip in the summer of 1973 sat in a box, stashed away in some forlorn closet. But in the years after that trip, Mr. Shore’s documentation of “ordinary” American culture — small-town streets, motel interiors, and portraits of strangers — went on to become famous. Tonight, Mr. Shore returns to ’73 and discusses his summer at the Strand Bookstore, afterward signing copies of “A Road Trip Journal” (Phaidon). An exact reproduction of Mr. Shore’s journal from the trip, “A Road Trip Journal” reunites that forgotten document with Mr. Shore’s photographs and reproductions of his collected ephemera. It is a time capsule of one man’s trek: where he stayed, what he ate, what he watched on television, and how many miles he drove. The volume even includes a complete set of the postcards that Mr. Shore produced and surreptitiously distributed among the racks of local shops during the trip. 7 p.m., Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway, at 12th Street, 212-473-1452, free.