Customer Reviews

The Nature of Photographs

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a beautifully designed book. The selection of photographs thoughtfully illustrates the way photography works. I enjoyed most especially the author's own "Luzzara Italy, 1993."

The essay, though, is not always clear enough to support the author's ideas. One who is new to photography may have trouble understanding some of Mr Shore's concepts. For example, in the chapter "The Mental Level," he writes "If you right now become aware of the space between yourself and this page, there is a transmutation of your attention and perception. This sort of perceptual change...would for a photographer, lead to a realignment of his or her formal decisions in making a photograph.(p 65)" To put it plainly, if you think carefully about what you are seeing, you would likely discover something new about it. Such an insight would lead you to change the way you photograph it.

Nevertheless, I like the book. I recommend it to you.

Stephen Shore, the well known photographer (and teacher; who, among other things, was the first living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY) has recently updated his classic meditation on the Nature of Photographs. Recommended to all aspiring (and working) photographers, the beauty of this book is the density of its distilled wisdom.

You will not find anything here on f-stops, film speeds and lenses, nothing on the darkroom (analog or digital), nothing on the raging "debate" whether to pick up an 8 megapixel DSLR or a 10, and no instructions - at least explicit ones - on how to take "better" pictures. What you will find is the crystalline essence of Shore's lifetime's worth of thinking about the nature of the photograph. His short, Zen-like prose-poem musings pierce the proverbial bullseye like an archer's arrow; and leave the reader both enchanted and haunted by their eloquence and wisdom.

Shore reminds us that amidst the infinity of potential images, both real and imagined, the photographer has four - and only four - formal tools for defining a picture's content and organization: vantage point, frame, focus and time. Stop and think about that for a moment. With all the wonderful technology underneath our thumb as we prepare to press the shutter, with all the different ways in which we can image ourselves "taking" a shot, and all the different images that can conceivably exist, the photographer really only has these four fundamental "creative dimensions" with which to work, and no more! Where do I position myself; what do I put in the picture and what do I leave out; where should I focus my attention; and how much of a slice of time do I want to include?

Every picture that has ever been taken, and every photograph yet to be captured - from Adams' shots of Yosemite, to Cartier-Bresson's visual etudes on the "Decisive Moment," to visual realities created by some future technologies - is "reality" as aesthetically transformed by the four-dimensional human creative filter!

Yet somehow, miraculously even, this suffices to provide (however brief) glimpses of an infinite dimensional world of meaning and beauty. That is the magic of photography!

For those of you who have the first edition of this book...I have both versions of this book. The new book roughly doubles the number of accompanying images (including color photos) and adds quite a bit of commentary. It is written (thankfully!) in essentially the same style, which I find almost meditative in its quality and depth of vision. If you have enjoyed the first edition, you will likely treasure this one.

I stumbled on Mr. Shore's wonderful book whilst browsing for other photography books. This book while not breaking any new ground in Photography theory gives permission for the reader to reclaim and rexamine what a traditonal analog photograph can be. Admittedly it does not cover contemporary digital issues, it makes no claims to be this anyway, being more democratic in it's intention.

This book has allowed me to clarify in a succinct and simple manner a variety of issues that I have known intuitively since becoming serious about my image making, and now feel better equipped to share with my students.

This kind of writing is refreshing and uplifiting, something I feel is desirable in this hectic post modern world.

It was surprising to me that Mr. Shore could find ways of talking about photographs that I had not previously encountered. In deconstructing these classic photographs he has succeeded in making them and the art of photography more, not less, magical. This book would probably be most appreciated by readers who have studied and given careful thought to photography. Statements that might appear esoteric to the casual reader are within the realm of critical photographic discourse. This is a truly wonderful book.

I've always loved Stephen Shore's work ever since I bought his 'Uncommon Places' book in 1983. It has two of my favorite Shore images: La Brea Avenue & Beverley Boulevard and El Paso Street, El Paso (both taken in 1975) this last one is in The Nature of Photography. A photographer is perhaps the ideal person to tell others about the fundamentals of looking at photos and my appreciation of Shore's work was enough to make me buy the book.

It certainly has some quite stunning photos, especially where they relate to specific text and many thought provoking points come across but I was left with the impression that there should have been more or a different way to explain what there is. The book's photos are a key element in how to understand what is going on and I would have preferred to have seen others that didn't work as obviously as the ones that do. Shore, like any creative photographer, must have taken many images that he doesn't think work as well as the final choice. Seeing some lesser alternatives to the ones in the book would have improved it no end by explaining why photo A reveals a fundamental point beautifully but photo B doesn't. I thought too many visual concepts were put across more by words than images.

Shore says that he used Szarkowski's `The Photographer's Eye' when he started teaching and his book carries on the theme. Overall I still prefer Szarkowski's book, there are far more photos included and the presentation is much more user friendly than the hard edge Phaidon design, with its excessive amounts of empty page space and trendy use of a typewriter font for every bit of text.

Incidentally as both books are concerned with image appreciation and understanding maybe a DVD format would work just as well as these printed versions.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I read the reviews. I got the book. I read the book. Then I went and reread through the reviews again to see if I had missed the point of what people must have been saying. I'm left wondering if I even have the same book.

First off, this book has great photos magnificently reproduced. I appreciate when an author lets the images speak for themselves and this book had great potential to do just that, seeing that the entire text of the book would scarcely fill a dozen or so 3x5 file cards. Then the author opened his mouth and I was no longer sure what I was looking at. Only about 10% of the text made any sense to me. I do not question his mastery of photography, but I got the feeling I was being talked down to because I didn't have a doctorate in philosophy. I will agree with one reviewer statement that it seemed a bit pretentious. He really needs to work on his communication skills. Education should be used to help others learn, not show off how educated you are.

Personally, I didn't get a lot out of it. Not just because there wasn't a lot in it, but because what little there was seemed to go right over my head. I was left with the possible conclusion that maybe I'm too dumb to be a photographer. A good book should make seemingly complex topics simple, not do what this book does and make the very simple act of looking at a photograph complex.

It's not going to teach you how to start using your DSLR, but it's going to give you some great insight into how to approach the overall concept of photography and creating images. Stylish minimal design, sparse well considered text and an unusual selection of photos that are all reproduced to very high standards - nice density, subtle overgloss etc. Recommended.

This slim book provides insight on what your photography instructor probably thinks. I thought the most insightful commentary was the nature of space in each photograph.

While Shore's own photos of cars in parking lots remain cars in parking lots to me --neutron bomb idiom? There is some good work by the masters, Frank, Levitt, Winograd and anonymous.

This book helped me understand photographs in a way I never did before. The writing is deceptively condensed. It is really full of ideas and meaning. Being aware of these ideas has hepled my own photography.

If you enjoy the art of photography in all it's many forms than this is for you. It is Stephen Shore's unique perspective on photography and is essential for those who love to immerse themselves in photos and the photographers who take them. It is geared more for the in-depth collector and afficianados rather than the casual book buyer. And of course if you are a Shore fan than this is an easy must-have. The hardcover format and quality printing and are top-notch making this the best edition of the book available.