Stephen Shore Quotes

I wanted to make pictures that felt natural, that felt like seeing, that didn’t feel like taking something in the world and making a piece of art out of it.

If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism.

I think most serious photographers understand that there's this large gap between the world and how the world looks through a photograph.

The context in which a photograph is seen affects the meaning the viewer draws from it.

A photograph has edges the world does not.

I'm always interested in finding new aesthetic problems to deal with and challenge myself, even if the aesthetic problem is one of content.

A lot of the photography I'm doing and thinking about is directed at Instagram.

As not a native, I have the advantage of not seeing scenes habitually. I can see things fresh.

I know that people think of my work from the '70s as American, but I've been going to other places for a long time.

I had a creative hot streak in the 1940s and since then I’ve been pot boiling.

Even in ordinary reproduction [photography] verges on facsimile.

I do what feels natural, but I can't say I haven't thought about it.

I realize that as I get more experience as I get older, my perception changes and that feeds the photograph.

I was photographing every meal I ate, every person I met, every waiter or waitress who served me, every bed I slept in, every toilet I used.

I'm not interested in doing the same kind of picture over and over again. I pose problems for myself. Sometimes they are aesthetic problems and sometimes they are logistical problems.

I don't know how much a photograph can add to a biography, the way a film or writing or narrative medium could. Because it's a frozen image.

I've been the head of the photography program at Bard College for over 30 years, and I take that as seriously as I do my photography. My time is devoted to that too.

Back in the 70s it cost 15-20$ a shot for the film, the processing, and the contact sheet, now it’s twice that.