Description
Paul Strand (1890-1976) was one of the most important and influential photographers of this century. The dramatic achievements of his early career are the focus of this book, which accompanies an exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 1998. After studying photography in New York with the social reformer Lewis Hine, Strand began to absorb the ideas of the European avant-garde. He gradually abandoned the painterly effects of pictorialism in favor of a candid and psychologically potent realism on the one hand and a masterfully wrought abstraction on the other. Fellow photographer and art entrepreneur Alfred Stieglitz recognized Strand's astonishing pictures as bold strides into a new world and heralded them as the first images of an incisive modern vision. Strand's large, beautiful platinum prints are reproduced here in superb tritone and duotone plates. The text traces the early development of Strand's ideas, the complex cultural context of his experiments, and the emergence of such masterpieces as Blind, Wall Street, and The White Fence.
