Irradiation with light provides a powerful tool to interrogate, control or induce new quantum states of matter out of equilibrium, however a microscopic understanding of dynamics and light-matter coupling in solids remains a profound challenge. This talk will discuss three aspects for steering and probing correlated topological matter, dissipative electron systems and superconductors with light. I will show that THz radiation can grant a new quantum-geometric handle to steer correlated quantum materials such as magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, whereby light dynamically dresses the Wannier functions of interacting electrons which govern the low-energy dynamics. I will then discuss how light can couple to open electronic quantum systems interacting with Markovian reservoirs, to permit a spectroscopic probe of dissipation-engineered Lindbladian band structures and exceptional points in low-dimensional systems. Finally, I will argue that dynamical symmetry breaking with tailored light pulses can explore metastable phases in superconductors with competing instabilities, as a route to stabilize elusive triplet paired states.