24 Quotes by Stephen Shore

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.

I discovered that this camera was the technical means in photography of communicating what the world looks like in a state of heightened awareness. And it’s that awareness of really looking at the everyday world with clear and focused attention that I’m interested in.

Why can’t a photograph be all four things at once? -be an art object; be a document, what ever that means exactly, but deal with content; be a formalist exploration; and operate on some, metaphor is not the right word but, resonant level...

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

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

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 meet young artists and it becomes clear that with some the main motivation is getting a show in Chelsea. It strikes me that this is very different to the way it was for me, which was that I wanted to understand photography and the world and myself.

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

I don’t have to have a single point of emphasis in the picture. It can be complex, because it’s so detailed that the viewer can take time and read it, and look at something here, and look at something there, and they can pay attention to a lot more.