Skip to main content

Paul Strand (1890 – 1976)

"Paul Strand's debut in photography coincided with the first stirrings of modernism in the visual arts in America. Born in New York in 1890, he attended both the class and club in photography taught by Hine at the Ethical Culture School in 1908. A visit to Stieglitz's 291 gallery arranged by Hine inspired Strand to explore the expressive possibilities of the medium, which until then he had considered a hobby. 

Although he was active for a brief period at the Camera Club of New York, whose darkrooms he continued to use for about 20 years, his ideas derived first from the circle around Stieglitz and then from the group that evolved around the Modern Gallery in 1915, including Sheeler and Schamberg. Strand's work, which was exhibited at 291, the Modem Gallery, and the Camera Club, gained prizes at the Wanamaker Photography exhibitions and was featured in the last two issues of Camera Work. 

From about 1915 on, he explored the visual problems that were to become fundamental to the modernist aesthetic as it evolved in both Europe and the United States. During the 1920s he mainly photographed urban sites, continued with the machine forms begun earlier, and turned his attention to nature, using 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 inch view cameras and making contact prints on platinum paper. In these works, acknowledged as seminal in the evolution of the New Objectivity, form and feeling are indivisible and intense. In addition, Strand's writings, beginning in 1917 with "Photography and the New God," set forth the necessity for the photographer to evolve an aesthetic based on the objective nature of reality and on the intrinsic capabilities of the large-format camera with sharp lens."


source:  A World History of Photography by Naomi Rosenblum
 http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/strand/strand_articles2.html




Paul Strand. 
Porch Shadows, 1916. 
Alfred Stieglitz Collection. 
©Aperture Foundation Inc., 
Paul Strand Archive.






 Paul Strand (1890 – 1976)
Blind woman, New York, 1917





Paul Strand 
Double Akeley, New York 1922


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Group f/64 Manifesto (1932)

Ansel Adams by Dorothea Lange Group f/64 Manifesto The name of this Group is derived from a diaphragm number of the photographic lens. It signifies to a large extent the qualities of clearness and definition of the photographic image which is an important element in the work of members of this Group. The chief object of the Group is to present in frequent shows what it considers the best contemporary photography of the West; in addition to the showing of the work of its members, it will include prints from other photographers who evidence tendencies in their work similar to that of the Group. Group f/64 is not pretending to cover the entire of photography or to indicate through its selection of members any deprecating opinion of the photographers who are not included in its shows. There are great number of serious workers in photography whose style and technique does not relate to the metier of the Group. Group f/64 limits its members and invitational names to those worke...
1 comment
Read more

Post-photography

"The job of the photographer in the 21st century has become increasingly challenging as the practice is an overwhelmingly populist business. Anyone who has access to a camera has the power to become an artist, leaving a plethora of cached evidence on the internet for public consumption. This “found” internet content serves as a vast laboratory for major experimentation, underpinning the concept of post-photography, with endless possibilities for artists to recreate original works using avant-garde techniques drawn from both the digital and analogue eras." Fiona Martin (short presentation of the book Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera by Robert Shore) http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/post-photography / Perhaps there is less novelty here, regarding the context of photography transformed by the new image technologies developed in the late 20th century, in the particular sense that the early impact of photography itself transformed the regimes of vision and impact...
1 comment
Read more

The Daguerreotype: landscape and architecture

  Engraving of the first photograph of the Pathenon. Taken by Gaspard-Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière in 1839. Published in Excursions daguériennes by Noël Paymal Lerebours in 1841   source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Parthenon_1839.jpg   Niagara. Chute Du Fer a Cheval   from Excursions daguerriennes: vues et monuments les plus remarquables du globe,  published by Lerebours, Nöel-Marie-Paymal  1840 engraving from daguerreotype 26.0 x 73.5 cm.  source: Daguerreotypomania GEH "The Excursions Daguerriennes, représentant les vues et les monuments les plus remarquables du globe, [Daguerreian Travels, representing the most remarkable views and monuments in the world] was published in Paris by Noël-Marie Paymal Lerebours between 1841 and 1864. The volumes were sold by subscription and in the end contained more than one hundred views of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East shot between 1839 and 1844. Pattinson's view of t...
Post a Comment
Read more