Stephen Shore - El Paso Street, El Paso, Texas, July 5th, 1975 .

"...photography isn't really pointing, it's framing. There's something about it that's like pointing, but it's pointing with a frame.

One image I have in my mind is, what if I was to go into a blackened room, no lights on, with a flashlight that projected a rectangular beam. Everything in that beam is equally illuminated, so I'm pointing with it and exploring with it, but it's not a flashlight where there's a hot spot in the center and then it peters out, it's this rectangle of light, all equally illuminated.

...one of the bigger problems of people starting photography... is that they're thinking of photography as pointing and not framing so they're looking at an object and their field of perception kind of dissipates as it gets to the edge, like the way a rock song fades out ... (laughter). It's avoiding the decisiveness of saying "Here's the last note." In a photograph, there is always a last note."

-Stephen Shore in conversation with Noah Sheldon and Roger White.