Some time ago, we went to Asia and took a camera along, and I began to do what I'd done even years ago doing people. I couldn't get interested in it. And I did hundreds of photographs of details of the monuments as sculpture.

Shahn’s examination of the status quo inspired his creative process. Similarly Shahn’s New Deal art for the FSA and Resettlement Agency exposed American living and working conditions. Shahn defended his choice to employ pictorial realities rather than abstract forms.

He is best known for his works of social realism his left-wing political views and his series of lectures publiBen Shahnd as The Shape of Content.