The Nature of Photographs [Signed copy]

Shore, Stephen

ISBN 10: 0801857201 / ISBN 13: 9780801857201

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2010

About this Item

Oblong stiff glossy wrappers, pages a tad age-toned, 86 pages. This copy inscribed to Peter [Schjeldahl] and Brooke [Alderson] in ink on half-title page and signed just "Stephen". This page has a slight scratch above printed title. Scarce signed. Seller Inventory # 2293

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Nature of Photographs [Signed copy]

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

Publication Date: 2010

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Very Good +

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First.

About this title

Synopsis:

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.

About the Author:

Stephen Shore 's work has been widely published and exhibited for the past twenty-five years. He was the first living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Published collections of his photographs include Uncommon Places, The Gardens at Giverny, Stephen Shore: Luzzara, The Velvet Years, and Stephen Shore: Photographs, 1973-1993. Since 1982 he has been chairman of the photography department at Bard College, where he is the Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts. James L. Enyeart is director of the Marion Center of Photographic Arts at the College of Santa Fe.