Paul Strand
| Paul Strand | |
|---|---|
 Wall Street, 1915 |
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| Born | October 16, 1890 New York City |
| Died | March 31, 1976 (aged 85) Orgeval, Yvelines |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Photography |
| Influenced | Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Hopper |
Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe and Africa.
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[edit] Early modernist work
Paul Strand was born in New York City to Bohemian parents. In his late teens Strand was a student of renowned documentary photographer Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. It was while on a fieldtrip in this class that Strand first visited the 291 art gallery – operated by Stieglitz and Edward Steichen – where exhibitions of work by forward-thinking modernist photographers and painters would move Strand to take his photographic hobby more seriously. Stieglitz would later promote Strand's work in the 291 gallery itself, in his photography publication Camera Work, and in his artwork in the Hieninglatzing studio. Some of this early work, like the well-known "Wall Street," experimented with formal abstractions (influencing, among others, Edward Hopper and his idiosyncratic urban vision).[1] Other of Strand's works reflect his interest in using the camera as a tool for social reform. He was one of the founders of the Photo League, an association of photographers who advocated using their art to promote social and political causes.
[edit] Film-making
Over the next few decades, Strand worked in motion pictures as well as still photography. His first film was Manhatta (1921), also known as New York the Magnificent, a silent film showing the day-to-day life of New York City made with painter/photographer Charles Sheeler. Manhatta includes a shot similar to Strand's famous Wall Street (1915) photograph. In 1932–5, he lived in Mexico and worked on Redes (1936), a film commissioned by the Mexican government, released in the US as The Wave. Other films he was involved with were the documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and the pro-union, anti-fascist Native Land (1942).
[edit] France
In June 1949, Strand left the United States to present Native Land at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia. The remaining 27 years of his life were spent in Orgeval, France where, despite never learning the language, he maintained an impressive creative life, assisted by his third wife, fellow photographer Hazel Kingsbury Strand.
Although Strand is best known for his early abstractions, his return to still photography in this later period produced some of his most significant work in the form of six book ‘portraits’ of place: Time in New England (1950), La France de Profil (1952), Un Paese (featuring photographs of Luzzara and the Po River Valley in Italy, 1955), Tir a'Mhurain / Outer Hebrides[2] (1962), Living Egypt (1969) and Ghana: an African portrait (1976).
[edit] Family
Strand married the painter Rebecca Salsbury in 1922. He photographed Rebecca Salsbury Strand frequently, sometimes with uncommonly close compositions. After divorcing Salsbury, Strand married Virginia Stevens in 1935. They divorced in 1949; he then married Hazel Kingsbury in 1951 and they remained married until his death in 1976.
[edit] Politics
The timing of Strand’s departure to France is coincident with the first libel trial of his friend Alger Hiss, with whom he maintained a correspondence until his death. Although he was never officially a member of the Communist Party, many of Strand’s collaborators were either Party members (James Aldridge; Cesare Zavattini) or were prominent socialist writers and activists (Basil Davidson). Many of his friends were also Communists or were suspected of being so (MP DN Pritt; film director Joseph Losey; Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid; actor Alex McCrindle). Strand was also closely involved with Frontier Films, one of more than twenty organizations that were branded as ‘subversive’ and ‘un-American’ by the US Attorney General.
Strand also insisted that his books should be printed in Leipzig, East Germany, even if this meant that they were initially prohibited from the American market on account of their Communist provenance. De-classified intelligence files, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and now lodged at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, reveal that Strand’s movements around Europe were closely monitored by the security services.
[edit] References
Notes
- ^ Wells, Walter, "Silent Theater: The Art of Edward Hopper", London/New York: Phaidon, 2007
- ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20051027001637/http://www.nmpft.org.uk/paulstrand/home.asp
Bibliography
- Paul Strand: Aperture Masters of Photography. Hong Kong: Aperture. ISBN 0-89381-077-0.
- Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography (3rd ed.). New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-7892-0028-7.
- Maren Stange, Paul Strand: essays on his life and work, New York: Aperture 1991.
- Mike Weaver, ‘Paul Strand: Native Land’, The Archive 27 (Tucson, Arizona: Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 1990) 5–15.
- Fraser MacDonald, 'Paul Strand and the Atlanticist Cold War' History of Photography 28.4 (2004) 356–373 available for download as pdf.
- Gualtieri, Elena "Paul Strand Cesare Zavattini: Lettere e immagini", Bologna, Bora, 2005, ISBN 88-88600-37-X.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Paul Strand |
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Paul Strand Collection
- Aperture Foundation, managers of Strand's estate
- Masters of Photography: Paul Strand
- Paul Strand at the Internet Movie Database
- Works by or about Paul Strand in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Paul Strand at Find a Grave
- History of Photography journal
- Circle’s Edge
- Paul Strand (Getty Museum)
- Paul Strand, Lumiere Gallery
