The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore

[johnastovall]

The Nature of Photography by Stephen Shore (Phaidon, 2007)

Stephen Shore has with "The Nature of Photography" followed the path started by John Szarkowski's "The Photographer's Eye" but 'gone beyound Szarkowski in to a new land. Where Szarkowski shows how to look at photographs with a curatorial and art historians prespective, Shore gives us the vision and understanding from the photographer and teacher.

Shore uses images from all times and genres by both known and unknown photographers to show us how to read at the grammar of images. Shore's format is with a picture on the left page and short almost mediative peice on the point it illustates to the right page. The book is composed of five sections. Each section is designed to take you deeper into the grammar of images. The sections are "The Nature of Photographs", "The Physical Level", "The Depictive Level", "The Mental Level", and "Mental Modeling."

This as with all great books on photography isn't about how to do it but how to see, think, and have vision.

If you are seriously looking to improve your photography you need to have this and Szarkowski's book on hand for those times you need the inspiration for vision.

[Gordon]

curious - did you learn anything new from this ? Could you touch on what those highlights were in specifics ?

[johnastovall]

What I found isn't what you'll find. It's mediations not specifics.

Read the book....