7 Take Aways From Photographer Stephen Shore’s Master Class

Stephen Shore recently gave a four-lecture Master Class at the Jeu De Paume in Paris.

The story he told about how these two pictures were made (24 hours apart) reveals a great deal about his process and vision.

“I made this photograph at the intersection of Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles on June 21st in 1975. I was beginning a commission from the great architect, Robert Venturi, to explore the contemporary American landscape. I was drawn to this scene because it seemed to be such a quintessential Los Angeles experience: the gas stations, the jumble, the signage, the space. I was also, for my own personal reasons, exploring visual structure. For the previous two years, since I had been using a large-format camera, questions would arise, seemingly on their own. They were questions about how the world I wanted to photograph could translate into an image. They were, essentially, questions about structure.”

“I needed to hold all the structural elements together, visual intervals. I was paying attention to how something in the foreground related on the picture plane to something in the background. … Is it fussy to pay attention to all of that, and I don’t think it’s fussy because those relationships are simply there. I can’t pretend that light does not bear relationship to the sign. I can’t pretend that the middle post in the lower right-hand corner doesn’t bear a relationship to the edge or the back post of the supporting gas pump island. If you look through this picture, you’ll see these little intervals I’ve created. Between the Beverly sign on the left and the billboard underneath it. Between the traffic sign, back of it facing us, just to the right of that, and the traffic light with the green light next to it. These relationships are going to be there whether I attend to them or not. If I attend to them, I open the space to the viewer. As I pay attention deeper into the space, the viewer can pay attention deeper into the space. I had to make sense of the three-dimensional scene in two dimensions. It required structure to hold it together. I recognized I was imposing an order on the scene in front of me. Photographers have to impose order and bring structure to what they photograph. It is inevitable. A photograph without structure is like a sentence without grammar. It is inconceivable. A sentence without grammar is just words. This order is the product of a series of decisions – where to position the camera, where to place the frame, when to release the shutter. These decisions simultaneously define the content and determine the structure in a single act.”

“… err on the side of transparency. By transparency, I mean that the artist’s decisions don’t call attention to themselves. That you see through them. That the decisions are transparent. Photography is not as adept at showing virtue and scorn as theater and theater literature and film is but this last line ‘to show the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.’ That’s something photography can do. I realized I was imposing a 17th-century solution on a 20th-century problem. I decided to return back to that same intersection the next day and find a structure that evokes the form and pressure of the age. The more invisible the photographer’s hand, the more transparent the closer the image is to the structure of experience. Structure is not art sauce poured on top of content. It is an expression of understanding.”

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Here are a few choice quotes gathered from other moments during the lectures.

“A photograph exists in three dimensions. The two physical dimensions and the cognitive dimension. Focus opens the door to the cognitive dimension.”

“Each level of a photograph is determined by the attributes of the previous level. The print provides the physical framework for the visual parameters of the photographic image. The formal decisions, which themselves are the product of the nature of that image, are the tools that the mental model uses to impress itself upon the picture. What I meant by that is the choice of vantage point, time, frame, and focus are the tools that impress the mental level upon the picture. Each level provides the foundation for the next level. At the same time, each reflects back, enlarging the scope and meaning of the one on which it rests. The mental level provides the counterpoint to the depictive theme. The dedicated image turns a photograph into a seductive illusion or a moment of truth and beauty.”

“Expressing how the world looks when seen in a state of heightened awareness. Objects look brighter, their boundaries more discrete, textures better defined, and the natter of the material … more pronounced. The perception of space is heightened. The clarity of the mental image clarifies the picture. Sharpness is an optical quality. … Clarity is a psychological quality.”  To get this quality requires years of mastering technique. Technical decisions become second nature. And then, mastering visual grammar so it too becomes second nature.

“Like astronomy, photography is an analytic discipline. Photographers like astronomers find order in the world what might be called the crystallization of phenomena into organized forms. We project a structure even when trying to discern order, based on certain assumptions that we all make. The order we see is governed by our presumptions, inherent mental frameworks, and paradigms.”

“One of the threads running through photography is the redefinition of meaningful content. Photographers find meaning in something where it hadn’t been recognized before. And then over time, that content itself becomes a convention. But photographers find meaning in new places, not for the sake of novelty but really experiencing meaning.”

“I never found I could reinvent myself. I’m not exactly happy with the word reinvent. I just move on to something new. I’m still me. I’ve always found for me, that comes out of the work. Not out of thinking what do I need to do next? Work produces work.”

June 18 – Join us for a Conversation online with Santa Fe Workshops.

View 12 Great Photographs By Stephen Shore.

Read 13 Great Quotes By Photographer Stephen Shore.

Listen to Stephen Shore here.

Explore Stephen Shore’s books here.

Visit Stephen Shore’s website.