Artist, Stephen Shore: In the series I had made before this one, I was using a small 35-millimeter camera. Here, I'm using an 8-by-10 camera, a large camera that's on a tripod, I go under a dark cloth, and it produces a negative that's eight inches by ten inches. And what I realized is that it renders the world in such detail that I don't have to move into something close to make it clear in a picture. I can let it be a small part of a larger, more complex picture.
And so, rather than the picture being, in a way, a view through my eyes, it becomes something else. It becomes a complex world where the viewer can move their attention.
One of the things that interested me during this time was communicating the experience of clarity. And clarity should not be confused with sharpness—an 8-by-10 camera will produce sharpness, but clarity is a psychological aspect. And clarity can be communicated by the way a picture is organized. But, it can also be communicated through light. And I was attracted to very crisp, bright days, because that light, I felt, communicated the experience of clarity.