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STEPHEN SHOREINTERVIEW BY STEVE LAFRENIERE If Stephen Shore were known just for the iconic photos he shot as a teenager at Warhol’s original Silver Factory, he’d probably still get a place in the history of photography. But galvanized by a road trip from Manhattan to Amarillo, Texas, in 1972, Shore went on to pioneer the use of color in fine-art photography. Over the intervening years, his photos have also documented America and Americans in a way that presaged the straight-on deadpan vibe of much current image-making—this includes streetscapes and architecture shot to reveal them as abandoned film sets, and cryptic vérité portraits of people he meets. In 1998, Shore wrote a book that’s been handed around by photographers of my acquaintance ever since. The Nature of Photographs is an illuminating meditation on the basic assumptions we have and make while looking at photos. It has the power to shift your own perceptions with one read. Since 1982, Stephen Shore has been the director of the photography department at Bard College.
Vice: Do you use The Nature of Photographs in your teaching? Stephen Shore: Actually, The Nature of Photographs grew out of a class that I had taught called “Photographic Seeing.” At first I was using John Szarkowski’s book The Photographer’s Eye as a text. But there was one chapter that didn’t fit with the way I wanted to teach, so I wrote a new one. Then I decided I had enough material to do a book. But yes, I still use it now, and I find that my students are very receptive. Are you surprised that it’s become such a must-read among younger photographers? I’m not aware of that. Unless somebody tells me, there’s no real way for me to know what effect it has. It’s delightful for me to hear that it’s getting that response. It’s so rigorous in its logic, so I wonder if it’s hard teaching a student whose reasons for being a photographer might be at odds with your own? Their approach and style can be radically different and it doesn’t pose a problem. But let me qualify that. In the early 80s, when I first came to Bard, most of the photography programs around the country emphasized manipulated photography. Photography as a kind of printmaking—collaging, painting on photographs, sewing on photographs, that kind of thing. The photography faculty at Bard decided we were going to emphasize straight photography—that we would simply take an aesthetic stance and that we wouldn’t try to satisfy everyone. There were plenty of other schools to go to if people were interested in the manipulated image. But within the straight approach there’s still a huge range, including performative, snapshot... a huge range of possibilities. We made that distinction early on, but even then some of the students in their senior year veer off from it, and in using Photoshop enter more into the printmaking realm. I don’t find there’s any problem. I feel my job is to help the student find their voice. Does teaching affect your own work? Definitely. If I have ten people in a class, I have to begin to think like ten different people. I’m trying to lead them individually to their next step as artists. And so I find myself, as I go out into the world with a camera, having more visual ideas than if I hadn’t been teaching. Ideas that may seem not in line with what people think of as my style. For the past five years, my main project has been a series of books using print-on-demand technology. These books often go in very different directions because I can explore an idea that I might want to spend one day on, that I’m not interested in spending a year on. And I think the genesis of some of this was the mental exercise of teaching different people. Digital cameras had to have helped. I think digital made it easier. I guess I could have done it with film. But it seemed to flow with digital. There’s something light and spontaneous in the touch of digital sometimes. When did you first start using it? For work that I’m really focused on, about six years ago. I imagine you use it for fashion editorials. That’s all I’m using now for commercial work. It flows so much better. What cameras do you have for that? I use different ones on the job. I rent them. Last week I did a job and I was using a Nikon D3. But I use a Canon Mark III sometimes, or a 4x5 camera with a Leaf back. It really depends on the situation, what the needs are. Fifteen years ago when you were doing work like this you might go Polaroid first, and when the Polaroid got approved by everyone then do the shot. That’s fine if it’s a tabletop still life. But for example, in January I did a Nike campaign using athlete models who were running. I needed to get the motion of them running, get their legs in a visually interesting configuration, and at the same time have three different styles of running shoes clearly visible. I had to have them run over and over again. If I was doing this and made a Polaroid, and the art director and the client all approved, now I would have to put film in the camera and try to re-create it. It would be almost impossible. This way they look at the image on a computer and they say, “Yes, that’s the one,” and that’s it. In your fine-art work the concept of a photograph is more important than its need to also be an aesthetic object made by “authentic” means of film negative and a darkroom. Digital could have hit that mark. I don’t really have an explanation for why I didn’t explore it sooner. I remember that one of my first digital cameras was a Casio Exilim, which was then about the size of a PalmPilot. After 30 years of using an 8x10, the idea of a camera that was about a quarter of the size of my exposure meter had a certain attraction. But actually I’ve always been interested in commonly available technology and processes that are very accessible. So I’m not sure why I didn’t use digital sooner. I read an article wherein you spoke about the economy of digital versus analog. There is some relation between the cost of taking a picture and the attention the photographer pays to the picture. With an 8x10 camera, simply because it costs, say, $35 or $40 for a sheet of film processing and the contact print, the picture is going to be well considered. Because the digital picture is free, what I find is a two-sided phenomenon. The positive side is that there’s less restraint and greater potential for spontaneity. The downside is that there’s more work that’s made that isn’t particularly considered at all. The camera itself doesn’t require that. However, if somebody wants to use the camera with very consciously directed attention, it does that too. Your most iconic pictures were made with view cameras, either 4x5 or 8x10. Given what you just said, does it follow that those images were the only version of the shot? Yes, absolutely. And that’s where the economy came in. I realized that I couldn’t try to limit myself by only taking pictures that I knew beforehand were going to be good. Because then I would only take safe pictures, that way I wouldn’t learn anything. What’s the point? So the way I made this process that I loved financially feasible was to decide that I wasn’t going to take two of anything. I don’t mean not bracket, I mean exactly what you said—not even two views. What it forced me to do was to decide what I wanted.
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