The Nature of Photography: Stephen Shore
Truly a beautiful book that highlights the complexities of photography and how using the tools at our disposal in photography dictates the artistic output of the photography. I have gathered a few of my favourite quotes from this book that I can think sum up my favourite aspects of photography and the philosophical questions regarding photography as an artistic medium. “In bringing order to this situation a photographer solves a picture more than composes one.”(23) “Someone saying “cheese” when having a portrait made acknowledges unconcously the way time is transformed in a photograph. A photograph is static, but the world flows in time….”(37) “Pictures exist on a mental level that may be concident with the depictive level — what the picture is showing — but does not mirror it. The mental level elaborates, refines, and embellishes our perceptions of the depictive level. The mental level of a photograph proides a framework for the mental image we construct of (and for) the p...