I’ve just come across this interview with Stephen Shore on Darius Himes’ blog while researching another post. It’s very enlightening on Shore’s work (of which much has been written). The answer to the following question particularly resonates and, dare I say it, partly explains what I’m trying to do with the 5×4 in We English!

Darius Himes- Gerry Badger has described your work as an “heroic articulation of the real.” Which to me carries connotations of the work as a support for contemplation. What do you think he means by this?

Stephen Shore- For me it has to do with the view camera. In the original Uncommon Places, there’s a picture of Eason, PA, with a red and white Volkswagen van in it.

I made that photograph on the first day that I used the 8×10; all the work in A Road Trip Journal is made with a 4×5 and then I took one short trip in ‘74 with the 4×5 before borrowing a friends’ 8×10. As you’re looking at the photograph, you realize that there is a boy sitting in the window and that you can even see his breath on the glass. It was this photograph that made me realize that with this camera I don’t have to walk across the street and photograph him. I can let him be a tiny little thing to be discovered in the picture. This was a very different technical approach from American Surfaces, for instance. So that changes the relationship of the viewer to the picture and the function of the picture. It’s not just a window directing your attention–”here look at this”— but is something itself to be the object of attention and to be explored. I think that’s similar to what Badger is saying.

 

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