THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHS

The Nature of Photographs
An essential primer on how to look at and understand photographs.Stephen Shore

An essential primer on how to look at and understand photographs by one of the world's most influential photographers, Stephen Shore
Shore explores ways of understanding photographs from all periods and all types – from iconic images to found photographs, from negatives to digital files
Based on his many years of teaching photography at Bard College, the book serves as an indispensable tool for students, teachers and everyone who wants to take better pictures or learn to look in a more informed way
Includes discussion of works by the fathers of photography such as Alfred Stieglitz and Walker Evans as well as that of artists working with the medium today such as Collier Schorr

The Nature of Photographs is the essential primer of photography, not only for students but for anyone with an interest in the medium. This book grew out of a college course that Stephen Shore, one of the world's most influential photographers, taught for many years. In this book, Shore explores ways of understanding photographs from all periods and all types - from iconic images to found photographs, from negatives to digital files.

This books serves as an indispensable tool for students, teachers and everyone who wants to take better pictures or learn to look at them in a more informed way. Its aim is not to explore photographic content – the subject of an image – but to describe the physical and formal attributes of a photographic print, the very elements that form the tools a photographer uses to define and interpret that content. By teaching us how to look at photographs and helping us to see the world the way the photographer may have seen it, Shore also teaches us a way of looking at the world around us.

The Nature of Photographs is a primary tool for critical analysis and the understanding of photography in general. As one of the photographers who established colour photography as a legitimate medium of artistic expression in the early 1970s and an influential and important teacher of both the theory and practice of photography, Stephen Shore is the ideal guide to the subject of ‘how’ to look at