The Nature of Photographs: a Primer: A Primer
£14.86
How to think about photographs you are about to take - It s a hundred and twenty odd pages but you can skip through it in an hour if you want, and don t take time to reflect. But if you do take time to reflect, it s a little like those magic-eye books where the sense of what the image is about and in this case, what the author is talking about, snaps into place. It s deceptively simple, some or maybe a lot of it, you already thought about and know, but put it together and it makes an optimist out of you. An optimist because you know more about what you want to shoot and why. Recommended.
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.As both books are concerned with image appreciation and understanding maybe a DVD format would work just as well as these printed versions.
A great photographer, but limited as a writer - Shore is a great photographer whose influence has been significant in both European and American Art photography over the last thirty years or so. He is also a noted teacher. With these things in mind I had high expectations, but ultimately found the book something of a disappointment. Shore s first problem is that he is not a very accomplished writer and therefore a number of his points are quite clumsily made, inelegantly expressed, or are unintentionally difficult to follow. The tone of the book is generally straightforward but it is peppered with some odd turns of phrase where it is difficult to know quite what he meant. Some of the content is quite obvious and the style of the book (short snippets of text) does not allow ideas to be developed. Where the book scores highly is in the choice of images to support his points, here Shore s superb eye shows though. Ultimately by placing the chosen works in juxtaposition Shore forces the reader/viewer to speculate on the nature of the photographic image (Shore s intention), but the text is only of limited value in clarifying such speculation. Whilst it is always interesting to read the thoughts of a master practitioner, there are a number books that develop these issues with greater clarity and depth.
Concise meditation on the nature of photographs - Stephen Shore belongs to a great tradition of deeply philosophical photographers who, theorising about the very nature of their craft manage to create images of enormous didactic power.. truly considered and sincere. With this book, Shore introduces The Photograph as object, as entity and as artifact of the mechanical processes that created this modern time capsule .An interesting book, well illustrated with minimal text to trigger thought processes rather than to lay down laws .Not as involving on a literary scale as Sontag s On Photography by never the less a profound introduction to the medium for those who are interested.
Fantastic-an essential and defintive work - An excellent book that manages to demystify photography into its analytical and subtractive parts.This is not a technical manual on f-stops and shutter speeds. It looks much deeper, and identifies and establishes the precursors that ultimately make demands on camera, lens and final media. Whether you have been shooting for years or have just been armed with the latest DSLR, this is for you.It s the best book I ve ever seen on the pure essence of photography.Very easy to read, and with short succinct paragraphs it will help you to take better pictures and appreciate the work others.