Lately, Stephen Shore has been thinking about the quasi-spiritual aspects of photography, an interest that he has had since his early twenties, when he sought out a ten-day workshop with the modernist photographer Minor White. There is something about the act of paying very close attention to the world through the camera, Shore explained, that can mimic a kind of altered state of consciousness, akin to what occurs during meditation.
“This spring, I asked my class about halfway through the semester, ‘How many of you, when you’re working, found that you’ve entered a flow state?’ Every hand went up.”
What Shore was doing during those first days roaming Manhattan with his camera was not just acquiring formal skills but also honing a particular quality of attention that would serve him for the rest of his career. This, perhaps, is why many of his earliest images maintain their vitality today. He told me, “If you were in the present when you were doing the work, the work always exists in the present.”
from Stephen Shore's Precocious Adolescent Eye, Chris Wiley, The New Yorker
