Paul Strand (1890-1976)

Professions: Photographer

Paul Strand , 1890-1976 'rebecca'
PAUL STRAND
[ PHOTOGRAPHS ]
PAUL STRAND Stockburger's Farm, East Jamica,

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Paul Strand Biography

(b New York, 16 Oct 1890; d Orgeval, nr Paris, 31 March, 1976). American photographer. He studied at the Ethical Culture High School, New York, where in 1908 he enrolled for a course in photography given by Lewis Hine. During this period he visited Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, 291, in New York, where the work of the Photo-Secession convinced him that the camera could be used as the instrument for aesthetic as well as documentary purposes. To further his skill in the techniques associated with more ‘artistic’ photography, he joined the Camera Club of New York and learnt how to make enlargements and to print in platinum, gum bichromate and carbon. After 1913 his work evolved slowly from the soft-focus symbolism of Pictorial photography to the images of greater definition in his urban street scenes and portraits of 1915 (e.g. Wall Street, New York, 1915 ; Millerton, NY, Aperture Found., Strand Archv; see fig.). This transformation embodied concepts of abstract pictorial organization, stimulated by examples he had seen in the Armory Show of 1913, in exhibitions at the 291 gallery and in reproductions in Stieglitz’s photographic journal Camera Work . In 1916 Stieglitz, who considered Strand the only photographer of merit coming to the fore, organized an exhibition of his work at 291, which he featured in the last two issues of Camera Work in 1917. Included in the exhibition were images in which ordinary artefacts, among them crockery and porch furniture, were converted into abstract statements of form and light, for example Abstraction, Bowls (1916; photogravure reproduction in Camera Work , 1917). The eventual evolution of Strand’s vision and his preference for sharply defined, pre-visualized, large format imagery were a consequence of his practical experience as well as his awareness of contemporary artistic idioms. As a photographer for the US Army Medical Corps during his service in World War I in 1918–19, he made X-ray plates and close-ups of medical practices that helped to confirm his choice. His chosen direction can be seen in the urban scenes of the 1920s and in the close-ups of forms in nature that claimed his interest more strongly in the late 1920s.

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