I didn’t get to Stephen Shore’s talk in London on Tuesday, but I’ve just been listening to it and watching it on video on the AA School of Architecture web site. Shore has been the director of the Photography Program at Bard College in upstate New York since 1982, but most of us probably know him for his 1982 Aperture book Uncommon Places, which gave many of us a new impetus to explore colour photography.
He talks about the nature of photography and the four tools that a photographer has at his disposal, “focus, moment & duration, choice of frame and choice of vantage point.” He says “Photography is essentially an analytic medium … a photographer starts with the whole world and every decision brings order to it … a photograph is solved more than it is composed.”
It’s a long video – 90 minutes – but it held my interest for most of that time, and is a very clear exposition of his views on photography and of course of his own work. As well as the actual talk the video also includes the whole of the question session with Shore after the talk.
