Short but deep | The Nature of Photographs

You can look but can you see | The Nature of Photographs | Stephen Shore

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	• The Nature of Photographs Stephen Shore Phaidon Press, 2007 - 136 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Did i get the same book?

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.

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Short but deep

In this short essay, Shore manages to communicate some deep truths about photography in a refreshingly clear and accessible style. The arguments are simple, profound and convincing. Together with the photographs, the result is a thought-provoking and almost meditative book. It has become one of my favorites.

You can look but can you see

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.

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Very good. A must for people who want more from photography.

Even though more explanations on the pictures would have been helpful, the little that is written opens the reader's mind to think differently and see more in photographs, wether we just look at them or are about to take them ourselves.
The pictures themselves are very inspirational.
I loved it, and recommend it to anyone who isn't interested in photography on the shallow level of "pictures that look good" only.

Worth a look and a read

This book is in many ways another take on John Szarkowski's The Photographer's Eye, as Shore notes. This is not a bad thing. It is really quite straightforward and, so far as it goes, worth a read. Actually I've read it twice. (It doesn't take long.) The interplay between photos and text is generally effective, the selections are generally helpful, and the image quality quite good (especially for the price). Maybe I should have given it five stars; it's very good in its own way. However, it does rather show the limits of text for understanding photographs and the attention to the individual images is not, and is not meant to be, very developed.

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An Essential Primer on Understanding Photography by One of theWorld's Most Influential Photographers "In my roughly twenty years of writing about photography, I don't thinkI've come across a book that has implied so much with so few words, a bookthat raises so many important questions with so little fanfare and withsuch precision."-James Kaufmann, Photographer's ForumBy the age of 14, Stephen Shore (b.1947) took his first photograph.By 17,he was a regular at Andy Warhol's Factory photographing both the artist andhis entourage.At 23, he became the first living photographer to have aone-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.At 35, he was appointedDirector of the Photography Program at Bard College.An unrivalled pioneerin the field of color photography, his work has been exhibited in numerousmuseums worldwide, including an exhibition opening this May at theInternational Center of Photography that focuses on the work from hiscritically acclaimed books American Surfaces and Uncommon Places.Withsuch an impressive career, no one is a better suited guide to the nature ofphotographs. THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHS by Stephen Shore, is an essential primer on howto understand photography by one of the world's most influentialphotographers.Growing out of a college course that Shore taught for manyyears, this book explores ways of looking at photographs from all periodsand all types--from iconic images to found photographs, from negatives todigital files.Its aim is to describe the physical and formal attributesof a photographic print--the very elements that form the tools aphotographer uses to define and interpret the content.In the end, Shoreteaches us, on the most basic level, how a photograph "works." As well as a selection of Shore's own work, THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHScontains images from all eras of photography, from classic works by WalkerEvans, Robert Frank, and Eug+ne Atget to more contemporary work by Berndand Hilla Becher, Cindy Sherman, Joel Sternfeld, Thomas Struth, and RichardPrince. It includes all genres, such as street photography, fine artphotography, and documentary photography, as well as images by unknownphotographers.Together with his clear, intelligent, and accessible text,Shore uses these works to demonstrate how the world in front of the camerais transformed into a photograph. Divided into four main chapters--The Physical Level, The Depictive Level,The Mental Level, and Mental Modeling--THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHS exploreshow photographs function visually.By teaching us how to see through theeyes of a photographer, Shore teaches us a new way to look at the worldaround us.This affordable book serves as indispensable tool for students,teachers, and everyone who wants to take better pictures.

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