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The Nature of Photographs
by Stephen Shore
Product Group: Book
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (1998-02-25)
ISBN: 0801857198
EAN: 9780801857195
Dewy Decimal #: 770.11
Hardcover: 104 pages
SKU: 071001006
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: This copy is in excellent condition. No markings, highlights, underlining, tears, creases. Nice, clean tight text and spine. Clean Hard Cover. Beautiful, glossy photos. Clean Dust Jacket with very light shelf wear. This copy is a true masterpiece, and worth having at an affordable price. (J 43)
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
How does a photograph "work"? In this book, internationally acclaimed photographer Stephen Shore brings together more than fifty images (by such photographers as Walker Evans, Eugène Atget, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Frank Gohlke, Lee Friedlander, Edward Weston, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, and Jan Groover) to illustrate a process of looking at and understanding photography. He traces the process by which the world in front of the camera is transformed into a photograph -- and how that photograph, in turn, is transformed into a mental image. A photograph, Shore explains, can be viewed on several levels. First, it is a physical object, a print. On this print is an image, an illusion of a window onto the world. It is at this level that we "read" a picture and discover its content: a souvenir of an exotic land, the face of a lover, a wet rock, a landscape at night. This is the depictive level, in which the world is transformed into a photograph through qualities of flatness, frame, time, and focus. On a final level is the mental apprehension of the image, which joins the focus of lens, eye, attention, and mind. Using these levels of seeing, Shore reveals how the qualities of a photograph create tension and meaning -- as the collapsing of depth creates new relationships, as lines and shapes in the image play against the frame, as focus creates barriers in the depth of an image, as the duration of exposure variously transforms the fluid world into a static piece of film. As the visual image continues to grow in importance as a medium of global communication, the skills and insights conveyed by this book will become increasingly relevant both to those who take photographs and those who view them.
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Customer Reviews
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Great Book, Good learning opportunities
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-30
This book is great learning material for photographers. It's a little "heady", but full of beautiful, inspiring images.
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Science Oriented
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-09-08
This is an interesting book in that it explains the visual mechanics behind how we view photographs. Many of the examples given are beautiful pictures in their own right, but it is the written explanations of what goes on on in our brains as we study these two dimensional flat objects, where the book really shines. Despite its rather small size it is quite fascinating: an easy read, yet very informative. Any student of either science or photography, as well as those merely curious about how things work, will enjoy Shore's marvelous oeuvre. My only reservation, prompting the four star rating rather than a five, is its briefness. When it comes to us photographers, the more pictures, the better.
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Short but deep
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-14
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.
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You can look but can you see
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-05-05
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
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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Did i get the same book?
Rating (3)
Date: 2008-05-05
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
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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