Stephen Shore Explained

The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore

The nature of photography by Stephen Shore looks at photography on a physical, depictive and mental level. I agree with the points he gets across in his book and while I’m not a massive fan of his work in general I can appreciate how his influence has given the opportunity for others work to grow such as Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Martin Parr, Joel Sternfeld , and Thomas Struth.
This book explains, using the levels, how to turn the real world which is three dimensional into a flat, and two dimensional images. Then when the image is printed the physical level of the photograph can influence how the image is perceived, reaching into the mental level, therefore the levels all react and change how the next one is viewed.
On a physical level he describes how you can read an image almost like a book to either judge what era it’s from or how the photographer was thinking while deciding how to crop the image or whether it should be in colour or black and white, those decisions are what can make a normal image a great one in my opinion.

Research:

Börse, D., 2005. Photography Prize 2005. The Photographers’ Galley

http://5b4.blogspot.com/2007/04/stephen-shore-and-nature-of-photographs.html