Photographers have to impose order, bring structure to what they photograph. It is inevitable. A photograph without structure is like a sentence without grammar-it is incomprehensible, even inconceivable.

Stephen Shore

Categorized in : Order Photographer Photography

I was photographing every meal I ate, every person I met, every waiter or waitress who served me, every bed I slept in, every toilet I used.

toilets bed meals

Why can't a photograph be all four things at once? -be an art object; be a document, what ever that means exactly, but deal with content; be a formalist exploration; and operate on some, metaphor is not the right word but, resonant level.

levels mean art

There's something essentially fictive about a photograph. That doesn't mean that if you understand that, and you understand how the world is transformed by the camera, that you can't use the limitations or the transformation to have an observation that is a very subtle perception of the world.

cameras perception mean

I know that people think of my work from the '70s as American, but I've been going to other places for a long time.

long people thinking

I do what feels natural, but I can't say I haven't thought about... by Stephen Shore

I do what feels natural, but I can't say I haven't thought about it.

photographer natural feels

Even in ordinary reproduction [photography] verges on facsimile. by Stephen Shore

Even in ordinary reproduction [photography] verges on facsimile.

verge photography ordinary

I had a creative hot streak in the 1940s and since then I’ve been... by Stephen Shore

I had a creative hot streak in the 1940s and since then I’ve been pot boiling.

creative hot pot

I'm not interested in doing the same kind of picture over and over again. I pose problems for myself. Sometimes they are aesthetic problems and sometimes they are logistical problems.

kind problem sometimes

I don't know how much a photograph can add to a biography, the way a film or writing or narrative medium could. Because it's a frozen image.

film photograph writing

If I only try to solve the problems I set for myself, then I'm limited by what I can conceive of. I can't solve a problem I can't conceive. But if someone else gives me a visual problem, it can be out of the whole realm of my normal practice.

problem trying giving

I've been the head of the photography program at Bard College for over 30 years, and I take that as seriously as I do my photography. My time is devoted to that too.

photography college years

A quote that I like very much comes close to explaining my attitude about taking photographs. ‘Chinese poetry rarely trespasses beyond the bounds of actuality the great Chinese poets accept the world exactly as they find it in all its terms and with profound simplicity they seldom talk about one thing in terms of another; but are able enough and sure enough as artists to make the ultimately exact terms become the beautiful terms.’

artist attitude beautiful

I have to be reminded, “’It’s your son’s birthday party. Bring a camera.’ And then, when I’m there, ‘Take a picture,’ because it doesn’t occur to me to use it as this memorializing thing.

cameras party son

Back in the 70s it cost 15-20$ a shot for the film, the processing, and the contact sheet, now it’s twice that.

sheets cost film