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 picture.”(56)

“The quality and intesity of a photographer’s attention leave their imprint on the mental level of the photograph. This does not happen by magic. A photograpger’s basic formal tools for defing the content and organization of a picture are vantage point, frame, focus and time. What a photographer pays attention to governs these decisions (be they consious, intutive, or automatic). These decisions resonate with the clarity of the attention. They conform to the photographer’s mental organization — the visual gestalt—of the picture.”(65)

“When I make a photograph, my perceptions feed into my mental model. My model adjusts to accomodate my perceptions (leading me to change my photographic decisions). This modeling adjustment in turn alters my perceptions.”(76)