Martine Franck – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Paul Strand: The Balance of Forces’ at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

Exhibition dates: 14th February – 23rd April, 2023

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Parmesan, Luzzara 
1953
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Balance of forces

Look at the “colour” of the Parmesan cheese in Strand’s photograph Parmesan, Luzzara  (1953, above). If we think of Ansel Adam’s ‘Zone System’ (the 11 zones in the system from 0-10) where pure black is Zone 0, mid grey (the colour of a Kodak Grey Card) is Zone 5 and pure white is Zone 10… then in “real life” the colour of the wheel of Parmesan would fall in about Zone 5. But what does Strand do? He places the “colour” of the Parmesan wheel in Zone 2-3, much darker than in real life.

In Strand’s “continuous search for a photographic formalism” – that is, the most important aspect of the photograph being its form, the way it is made and its purely visual aspects rather than its narrative content or its relationship to the visible world – then we would ignore Strand’s moving zones, his dark, brooding cheese.

I think not.

Strand’s formalism does not stand alone, for his photographs breathe the subject he is photographing. They are not just surfaces (which is what formalism is), for the viewer is invited to imbibe (absorb or assimilate (ideas or knowledge)) of the intensity and feeling of the culture and people from which these photographs emerge. Feel the intensity of the gaze of Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France (1951, below). Imagine placing yourself in the ethereal space of Tir a’Mhurain, Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides (1954, below). Dark cheese.

Strand’s photographs are formal and yet they contain a luminiferous ether/real – transmitting light, but also acting as a medium for the transmission and propagation of spirit.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

The Fondation HCB offers a new perspective on the work of American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976) from the collections of the Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid. While Strand is often celebrated as a pioneer of straight photography, this exhibition also addresses the deeply political dimension of his work.

Through each trip, Paul Strand tries to tell the real life of people: humble people, affected by wars, bad weather, diseases, oppressive regimes… The artist highlights those who fight for their freedom, for their happiness. Touching stories, which give all their power to these photographs.

Art and documentary research, social and political involvement and the desire to remain objective: these ambivalences bring great strength to Paul Strand’s work. It is these opposing imperatives that make his photographs so interesting, so exciting for us as viewers.

Cécile D. “Exhibition Paul Strand Or The Balance of Forces, A Journey in Photos at the HCB Foundation,” on the Sotir Paris website February 13, 2023 [Online] Cited 19/03/2023

Interview de Clément Chéroux sur l’exposition Paul Strand ou l’équilibre des forces

Martine Franck (British-Belgian, 1938-2012)
Photographer Paul Strand in his garden, Orgeval
1972
© Martine Franck / Magnum Photos

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Wall Street, New York
1915
Platinum/palladium Print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Sandwich Man, New York
1916
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Blind Woman, New York
1916
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

In the mid 1910s Paul Strand produced a series of images of New York portraying a truly genuine perspective of the city. Strand, a young photographer at the time, connected with modern art and incorporated some of its tendencies into a series of unprecedented views of the metropolis. Anticipating Straight Photography, he made images that distanced themselves from the precepts of Pictorialism through a direct portrayal of reality.

His photographs rapidly found favourable reception within the pages of Camera Work, the legendary magazine directed by Alfred Stieglitz who dedicated the last two issues of the publication to Strand’s compositions. Almost half of the images that appeared were close-up portraits shot with a rudimentary system that allowed Strand to photograph his subjects without them noticing. These surprising shots offered a lively perspective of the city and focused on some of its figures, who were marginal albeit ubiquitous, and seldom represented. With this attention to the periphery of urban life, Strand manifested his commitment to reality rooted in the example of his mentor Lewis Hine.

Blind Woman is one of the most iconic images in the history of North American photography. Published in 1917 by Stieglitz it combines the compositional strength and sharp clarity characteristic of Strand’s work.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Abstraction, Bowls, Twin Lakes, Connecticut
1916
Gelatin silver print
22.5 × 16.5cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Abstraction, Porch Shadows
1916
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Portrait, Washington Square Park, New York
1916 (negative); 1917 (photogravure)
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

“Opposites are cured by opposites,” goes the saying. American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976) was heir to two great traditions in photography, often presented as opposed. He had a formalist approach that sought to prove photography an art, and a social approach, which saw photography as more of a documentary instrument serving political ends. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that Alfred Stieglitz and Lewis Hine, who occupy the two poles in photography history, were both Strand’s mentors in his formative years.

While in the mid-1910s Strand photographed faces of the people on the streets of New York, the first period of his work is especially marked by formalism. In 1917, when Stieglitz dedicated the latest issue of his famous magazine Camera Work to Strand, it was above all to show that photography had its own artistic language. Starting with a journey to Mexico City (1932-1934), then Moscow (1935), his approach became more political. He joined the American Labor Party and worked with more than twenty organisations classified “anti-American” during the McCarthy era, leading to his departure from the United States for France. Many of Strand’s choices were deliberated through this political conscience: his choice of subject, places he photographed, writers he worked with, the book as main vector for distributing his work.

In the past few decades, numerous exhibitions have been held on Strand focusing on his formalism. By no means minimising this perspective, the current project seeks to recontextualise Strand, emphasising the importance of his political commitments. Between formalist pursuits and social concerns, the two forces at work in his art are brought into balance here. If Strand often stands among the 20th century’s major photographers, it is precisely because he knew how to offer just equilibrium between the two poles.

The exhibition presents almost 120 prints from the collections of the Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, the film Manhatta made by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler in 1921 as well as several prints lent by the Centre Pompidou.

Biography

Born in 1890 in New York, Paul Strand entered the New York Ethical Culture School (ECS) in 1907 where he studied under Lewis Hine, who introduced him to the Photo Secession gallery, founded by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 Fifth Avenue. Stieglitz had an important influence on Paul Strand’s work from the beginning. In 1916, his work was published for the first time in Stieglitz’s magazine, Camera Work, of which he was an avid reader, and then exhibited at 291 in the exhibition Photographs from New York and Other Places. During the war, Paul Strand worked as a hospital radiographer and, after his close-ups of machines, began to take an interest in surgical technique. In 1919 he travelled to Nova Scotia in Canada where he photographed his first landscapes and rock piles.

In 1921, Paul Strand made the film Manhatta with the photographer and painter Charles Sheeler. Between 1925 and 1932, various exhibitions of his work were shown in New York galleries. He travelled to Mexico from 1932 to 1934, during which time he had a solo exhibition at the Sala de Arte in Mexico City, was appointed Head of Film and Photography at the Mexican Secretariat of Education, and directed the film The Revolts of Alvarado (Redes) for the Mexican government.

Paul Strand travelled to the USSR in 1935, where he met Sergei Eisenstein. He then joined the Nykino group, around Leo Hurwitz, Ralph Steiner and Lionel Berman. Two years later, he became president of Frontier Film, a non-profit educational film production company, with former Nykino members.

In 1943, Paul Strand returned to photography after more than ten years in the film industry. In 1945, MoMA gave him a solo exhibition. From 1949 to 1957, the photographer undertook several trips to Europe, from which several books were written, and began an exile outside the United States, which coincided with the period of McCarthyism. He settled in Orgeval, France, where he remained until his death in 1976.

Press release from the Fondation HCB

Manhatta (1921) | Paul Strand – Charles Sheeler

In 1920 Paul Strand and artist Charles Sheeler collaborated on Manhatta, a short silent film that presents a day in the life of lower Manhattan. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s book “Leaves of Grass,” the film includes multiple segments that express the character of New York. The sequences display a similar approach to the still photography of both artists. Attracted by the cityscape and its visual design, Strand and Sheeler favoured extreme camera angles to capture New York’s dynamic qualities. Although influenced by Romanticism in its view of the urban environment, Manhatta is considered the first American avant-garde film.

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
St. Francis Church, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico
1931
Platinum/palladium Print
17.1 × 21.8cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Men of Santa Ana, Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Man with Hoe – Los Remedios
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Cristo with Thorns – Huexotla
1933
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Mr. Bolster, Weston, Vermont
1943
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Mr. Bennett, West River Valley, Vermont
1944
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

In 1945 a major exhibition dedicated to the work of Paul Strand took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that included 172 photographs, becoming the greatest retrospective devoted to a photographer to date. The project was conceived by Nancy Newhall, Head of the Department of Photography at the institution, who during the show’s preparation proposed to collaborate with Strand on a book about New England, a region located in the northeastern United States.

For a little over a month and a half Strand travelled with his camera throughout the region. His previous experience in Mexico had provided him with an attentive eye for capturing the social and cultural reality of the territory; in this instance through photographs of landscapes, diverse forms of architecture, and through his characteristic portraits. Resulting from this process his first photobook, Time in New England, was published in 1950, with texts by Nancy Newhall. The project’s outcome and his successful collaboration with Newhall inspired Strand to initiate a series of publications that coincided with a growing demand for travel books.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Café Planchon, France
1950
Gelatin silver print on baryta paper
24.4 × 19.4cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

In 1950 Paul Strand left the United States due in great measure to the increasingly hostile social and political environment generated by the “witch hunt” of McCarthyism. Together with Hazel Kingsbury, who would become his third wife, Strand arrived in France. After their wedding that following year, they traveled the country together. Resulting from this journey and following the format of joining image and text that was established in his book Time in New England, the artist produced La France de Profil [France in Profile] in 1952. The book was published by renowned Swiss publisher Guilde du Livre, with texts by the writer and poet Claude Roy, whose points of view on the social reality and the ethical commitment of artists coincided with Strand’s.

In Café Planchon Paul Strand presents a rhetoric characteristic of the avant-garde, one of texts that belie the visual reality they attempt to portray, which grants them an inevitable and warm ironical distance. The image also contains a sense of artistic joy that is not merely related to the formal composition but is manifested in the proliferation of the vegetation, in the tactility of textures, and in the charming gradation of light that is finally enveloped by shadow. The richness of the image arises as a result of the photographer’s attention to this particular reality, which is celebrated in the book, as well as his technical prowess and the dedication he poured into the prints made in the darkroom.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Fisherman, Banyuls, Pyrénées-Orientales, France
1950-1951
Silver gelatin print
16.1 × 12.5cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France
1951
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

In 1952 Paul Strand published La France de profil [France in Profile] which included the photographs he took during his trip throughout the country. With texts by Claude Roy, the book was published by Swiss publisher Guilde du Livre, which had been producing a collection of travel books since the 1940s containing texts by well known writers such as Paul Éluard and Jacques Prévert, and photographs by artists such as Robert Doisneau and Michel Huet.

In a similar fashion to how he had articulated a unique perspective far from the hegemonic exoticising of Mexico during the 1930s, Strand portrayed France in a way that did not settle on its most picturesque features. As inferred by the title, the series is an oblique perspective on the territory materialised through an assortment of images that are arranged in a singular style. Towns, landscapes, examples of vernacular architecture, and faces of elderly people and fishermen appear next to photographs detailing small objects that – beyond their documentary value – join the artistic language of images while simultaneously evoking the time that is inscribed within them.

Young Boy captures the characteristic intensity of the gamut of black and white hues in Strand’s work. The beauty hidden within the heroic ruggedness of the boy’s face, emphasised by the artist’s treatment of light, exemplifies the way in which Strand’s attention to the artistic values he upholds effectuates his political commitment.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Anna Attinga Frafra, Accra, Ghana
1951
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Throughout the 1960s, during the Cold War, Paul Strand continued his documentary work traveling to different socialist countries such as Romania, Egypt, and Ghana. As evidenced by the series of photobooks that he published, Strand’s perspective on these realities is translated into portraits, landscapes, and images of the communities’ daily life and their objects. Nevertheless, although direct references to political issues are eloquently scarce in his photographs, some elements can be observed that subtly point to the positive aspects of the revolutionary processes occurring in these countries.

Such is the case of the portrait of Anna Attinga Frafra – included in Ghana: An African Portrait (New York, Aperture, 1976) – in which the simplicity of the composition points to one dissonant element: the books balanced on the girl’s head. The symbolic character of the image serves as a reference to the literacy and education campaigns planned for the Ghanaian populations, which included women, and has an undoubtedly, albeit subtle, propagandistic nature. Nevertheless, the photograph makes sense and coexists seamlessly with the other images that make up the series. As a whole, they offer a vision that is an alternative from ethnographic typology, incorporating the reality of the aspirations, efforts, and hopes of the community without becoming crude propaganda.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
The Lusetti Family, Luzzara, Italy
1953
Gelatin silver print
16.9 × 21.3cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Luzzara
1953
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Postmistress and Daughter, Luzzara, Italy
1953
Silver gelatin print
33.3 × 26.4cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
House, Benbecula, Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides
1954
Silver gelatin print
14.9 × 11.7cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Milly, John and Jean MacLellan, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Agnes MacDonald, Morag and Ewen MacLellan, Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides
1954
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Tir a’Mhurain, Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides
1954
Silver gelatin print
14.8 × 12.4cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Un paese
1955
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

300,000 lire, 10 sheets, 10 pillowcases, 10 towels, 10 parures and the bedroom are not enough to marry me, you can’t do less. He has to go into the army, otherwise we’d get married right away even if there’s little work. This year he has done less than a thousand hours of work.

Text by Zavattini, photographs by Paul Strand, Turin, Einaudi, 1955, p. 73

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Iordache Ciaocata, Bicaz, Romania
1960
Silver gelatin print
33.2 × 35.7cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand book covers

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
79 rue des Archives
75003 Paris

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Closed on Mondays

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson website

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Exhibition: ‘Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Exhibition dates: 19th March – 3rd July 2016

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Wall Street, New York
1915
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Last day for this exhibition from one of the masters of photography. Apologies to the gallery and the readers that I did not get the posting up earlier but I have just been so busy at work. At least we have a record of the exhibition online.

Some of the media images were in a really shocking state. I can’t believe that an artist of Paul Strand’s standing would ever have wanted his photographs distributed in such a state – for example, enlarge the unrestored Milly, John and Jean MacLellan, South Uist, Hebrides (1954, detail) below, and then look at the restored version above that I have digitally cleaned.

What can you say about Strand that has not already been said before? He is a seminal figure in the history of photography. His Wall Street, New York (1915, below) is still one of my favourite images of all time – for its light, foreboding, and incisive comment on capitalism and the worker. Follow this by one of the first truly “modernist” images, and one that changed the course of photography (and what a difference a year, and an image makes), White Fence, Port Kent, New York (1916, below) and you set the scene for a stellar career. To have that natural perspicaciousness: a penetrating discernment – a clarity of vision or intellect which provides a deep understanding and insight – is an element of wisdom that cannot be taught. As an artist, you’ve either got it or you haven’t.

As is observed in the Wikipedia entry on perspicacity, “In 17th century Europe René Descartes devised systematic rules for clear thinking in his work Regulæ ad directionem ingenii (Rules for the direction of natural intelligence). In Descartes’ scheme, intelligence consisted of two faculties: perspicacity, which provided an understanding or intuition of distinct detail; and sagacity, which enabled reasoning about the details in order to make deductions. Rule 9 was De Perspicacitate Intuitionis (On the Perspicacity of Intuition). He summarised the rule as

Oportet ingenii aciem ad res minimas et maxime faciles totam convertere, atque in illis diutius immorari, donec assuescamus veritatem distincte et perspicue intueri.

We should totally focus the vision of the natural intelligence on the smallest and easiest things, and we should dwell on them for a long time, so long, until we have become accustomed to intuiting the truth distinctly and perspicuously.”

Intuiting the truth distinctly and perspicuously… quick to pick out, from among the thousands of things he sees, those that are significant, and to synthesise observations. This is what Strand does so well. His photographs are honest, direct, without ego. They just are. They live and breathe the subject. How do you get that look, that presence such as in Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France (1951, below). That presence is repeated again and again – in rocks, tendrils, people, buildings, landscapes – and finally, in the last years of his life, in intimate, sensitive and complex images of his garden at Orgeval. God bless that we have great artists like Paul Strand.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the V&A for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Installation photographs of the exhibition Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London

For the first time in the UK in 40 years a major retrospective on the American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976) opens at the V&A. The exhibition is the first of its kind since Strand’s death in 1976 and shows how the pioneering photographer defined the way fine art and documentary photography is understood and practiced today.

Part of a tour organised by Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE and made possible by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the V&A exhibition reveals Strand’s trailblazing experiments with abstract photography, screens what is widely thought of as the first avant-garde film and shows the full extent of his photographs made on his global travels beginning in New York in 1910 and ending in France in 1976. Newly acquired photographs from Strand’s only UK project – a 1954 study of the island of South Uist in the Scottish Hebrides – are also on show, alongside other works from the V&A’s own collection.

Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century encompasses over 200 objects from exquisite vintage photographic prints to films, books, notebooks, sketches and Strand’s own cameras to trace his career over sixty years. Arranged both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition broadens understanding of Strand as an international photographer and filmmaker with work spanning myriad geographic regions and social and political issues.

Martin Barnes, curator of the exhibition said: “The V&A was one of a handful of UK institutions to collect Paul Strand’s work during his lifetime and the Museum now houses the most extensive collection of his prints in the UK. Through important additional loans, the exhibition explores the life and career of Strand, but also challenges the popular perception of Strand as primarily a photographer of American places and people of the early 20th century.”

The exhibition begins in Strand’s native New York in the 1910s, exploring his early works of its financial district, railyards, wharves and factories. During this time he broke with the soft-focus and Impressionist-inspired ‘Pictorialist’ style of photography to produce among the first abstract pictures made with a camera. The influence of photographic contemporaries Alfred Stieglitz and Alvin Langdon Coburn as well European modern artists such as Braque and Picasso can be seen in Strand’s experiments in this period. On display are early masterpieces such as Wall Street which depicts the anonymity of individuals on their way to work set against the towering architectural geometry and implied economic forces of the modern city. Strand’s early experiments in abstraction, Abstraction, Porch Shadows and White Fence are also shown, alongside candid and anonymous street portraits, such as Blind Woman, made secretly using a camera with a decoy lens.

The exhibition explores Strand’s experiments with the moving image with the film Manhatta (1920-21). A collaboration with the painter and photographer Charles Sheeler, Manhatta was hailed as the first avant-garde film, and traces a day in the life of New York from sunrise to sunset punctuated by lines of Walt Whitman’s poetry. Strand’s embrace of the machine and human form is a key focus of the exhibition. In 1922, he bought an Akeley movie camera. The close-up studies he made of both his first wife Rebecca Salsbury and the Akeley during this time are shown alongside the camera itself. Extracts of Strand’s later, more politicised films, such as Redes (The Wave), made in cooperation with the Mexican government are featured, as well as the scarcely-shown documentary Native Land, a controversial film exposing the violations of America’s workforce.

Strand travelled extensively and the exhibition emphasises his international output from the 1930s to the late 1960s, during which time he collaborated with leading writers to publish a series of photobooks. As Strand’s career progressed, his work became increasingly politicised and focused on a type of social documentary alongside the desire to depict a shared humanity. The exhibition features Strand’s first photobook Time in New England (1950), alongside others including a homage to his adopted home France and his photographic hero Eugène Atget, La France de profil, which he made in collaboration with the French poet, Claude Roy. One of Strand’s most celebrated images, The Family, Luzzara, (The Lusetti’s) was taken in a modest agricultural village in Italy’s Po River valley for the photobook Un Paese, for which he collaborated with the Neo-Realist screen writer, Cesare Zavattini. On display, this hauntingly direct photograph depicts a strong matriarch flanked by her brood of five sons, all living with the aftermath of the Second World War.

From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, Strand photographed in Egypt, Morocco and Ghana, all of which had gone through transformative political change. The exhibition shows Strand’s most compelling pictures from this period, including his tender portraits, complemented by street pictures showing public meetings and outdoor markets. The exhibition concludes with Strand’s final photographic series exploring his home and garden in Orgeval, France, where he lived with his third wife Hazel until his death in 1976. The images are an intimate counterpoint to Strand’s previous projects and offer a rare glimpse into his own domestic happiness.

Press release from the V&A

Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler
Manhatta
1921
Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive

Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gómez Muriel (directors)
Paul Strand (photography)
Silvestre Revueltas (music)
Redes / The Wave
1936
Filmada en Alvarado, Veracruz (México)

Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz (directors)
Paul Strand (photography)
Native Land
1942
VOSE (Tierra Natal)

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
White Fence, Port Kent, New York
1916 (negative); 1945 (print)
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Blind Woman, New York
1916
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Rebecca, New York
1921
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
New Mexico
1930
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Ahead of the first UK retrospective on Paul Strand in over 40 years, the V&A has acquired nine rare photographs from the pioneering 20th century photographer’s only UK-based series. Taken in 1954 in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, the photographs document the threat to traditional Gaelic life during the Cold War. The photographs will be unveiled for the first time together as part of the exhibition, Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century, opening 19 March.

Paul Strand defined the way fine art and documentary photography is understood and practiced today through his revolutionary experiments with the medium. The major acquisition, purchased for the V&A with the assistance of its Photographs Acquisition Group, comprise an intimate set of nine exquisite black and white vintage prints originally made for Strand’s photobook Tir A’Mhurain (‘Land of Bent Grass’).

A committed Marxist, Strand fled McCarthyism in the U.S. in 1950, pursued by the FBI. He settled in France, and carried out work there and in Italy before arriving on the Hebridean island of South Uist in 1954. Inspired by a BBC radio programme on Gaelic song, and news that the island would become home to a testing range for America’s new nuclear missile, Strand raced to capture the sights, sounds and textures of the place steeped in the threatened traditions of Gaelic language, fishing and agricultural life of pre-Industrial times. The photographs reveal Strand’s meticulous and methodical approach to photography, much like a studio photographer in the open air. They capture not only a pivotal moment in time, but also the end of a particular way of life for the islanders.

The acquisition encompasses four portraits of islanders staring directly at the camera, exuding strength and dignity. Each was photographed in their own environment, usually in or around their home, and is framed by weathered walls, doors or window frames – devices used often by Strand and borrowed from his 19th century photographic heroes David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. The V&A has also acquired five of Strand’s evocative landscapes, revealing the island’s reliance on the land and sea.

John MacLellan was eight years’ old when he was photographed by Strand with his two sisters for the picture Milly, John and Jean MacLellan, South Uist (below). Of the experience, he said: “I was very young when I met Strand, but I knew he must have been a serious photographer because of the quality of his camera. Me and my sisters were lined up and knew to look at the camera. Looking at the picture, my mother had combed our hair and dressed us in our smartest clothes. I’ve since read that Strand was motivated to take these photographs by the idea that things would change. I know so many people in the photographs, it’s wonderful to be able to look at them now and remember the place I used to call home.”

Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs at the V&A said: “The photographs made by Strand in the Hebrides are for me a high point in his long and distinguished career. Strand worked slowly yet deliberately and with great poise in his pictures. By this time, his vision for his work had fully matured. His approach to sequencing and editing images in books such as ‘Tir A’Mhurain’ was informed by his collaborative experience making films for over twenty years. The Scottish book contains establishing panoramas of landscapes and the sea, a cast of characters with memorable faces, details of homes and workplaces and close-ups of the rocks, sands and grasses of the natural environment. The accompanying text by Basil Davidson is eloquent and informative about life on the islands, both in the past and at a pivotal time in the 1950s.The whole is a subtle sequence of meditative, revealing pictures and texts that avoid sentimentality and are yet full of empathy. These pictures make a surprising British link with this major American Modernist photographer and will have a satisfying legacy as part of the permanent collection at the V&A.”

Strand is an important figure in the history of photography not only because his career spanned much of the 20th century, but because he relentlessly trialled and pioneered myriad photographic approaches, subjects and technologies. Ironically it was his variety and failure to coin a signature style, and his belief in the integrity of the photographic print as an original artwork, that have seen him increasingly overlooked in the 40 years since his death. The V&A’s exhibition seeks to redress the balance, covering all aspects of Strand’s long career, from his trailblazing experiments in abstraction and dynamic views of New York in the 1910s to his final intimate pictures of his home and garden in France made during the 1970s.

Text from the V&A

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
The Family, Luzzara (The Lusettis)
1953 (negative); mid- to late 1960s (print)
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France
1951 (negative); mid- to late 1960s (print)
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Milly, John and Jean MacLellan, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Milly, John and Jean MacLellan, South Uist, Hebrides (detail)
1954
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Angus Peter MacIntyre, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Angus Peter MacIntyre, South Uist, Hebrides (detail)
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Katie Margaret Mackenzie, Benbecula, Hebrides
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Katie Margaret Mackenzie, Benbecula, Hebrides (detail)
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Rock, Loch Eynort, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, Londonn
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Tendrils and Sand, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Sea Rocks and Sea, The Atlantic, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
The Road, South Lochboisdale, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Trawler, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Driveway, Orgeval
1957
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Couple, Rucăr, Romania
1967
© Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation

Martine Franck (Belgian, 1938-2012)
Paul Strand Photographing the Orgeval Garden
1974
© Martine Franck / Magnum Photos

From my mentor and friend Ian Lobb:

“Great camera – very great photographer.

He is making an image – his lower hand is about to go to the shutter button – the lens doesn’t have to be a camera lens, it could be an enlarger lens = note how the lens is tilted slightly forward to extend the depth of field… He has dressed up to take photos!!”

After I questioned holding a camera like this to take a photograph without using a tripod:

“Strand may not be making a picture – he may be just pretending. But he might be shooting @ f4. He might be showing off!!”

Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London
SW7 2RL
Phone: +44 (0)20 7942 2000

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Sunday, 10.00 – 17.45

V&A website

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Exhibition: ‘Eyes Wide Open: 100 Years of Leica Photography’ at Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 24th October 2014 – 11th January 2015

Curator: Hans-Michael Koetzle

Oskar Barnack (Germany, 1879-1936)
Wetzlar Eisenmarkt
1913
© Leica Camera AG

A photographic revolution. So much more than just photojournalism… and it has a nice sound as well.
“Indiscreet discretion” as the photographer F. C. Gundlach puts it. Some memorable photographs here.

Marcus

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Many thankx to the Deichtorhallen Hamburg for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War, Ernst Leitz II travelled to the USA. While there, he was able to capture photos, using a second model of the “Liliput” camera developed by Oskar Barnack, which most certainly would be found in a history of street photography.

From around the time of 1914, Oskar Barnack must have carried a prototype camera with him, particularly during his travels – the camera first received the name Leica in 1925. Perhaps his most famous sequence of images, because it has been shown continually since, is the striking series of the floods in Wetzlar, Germany, in 1920

Oskar Barnack invents the Ur-Leica

Designed by Oskar Barnack, the first functional prototype of a new camera for 35 mm perforated cinema film stock was completed in March 1914. The camera consisted of a metal housing, had a retractable lens and a focal plane shutter, which is not overlapped, however. A bolt-on lens cap that was swivelled during film transport, prevented incidental light. For the first time film advance and shutter cocking were connected to a camera – double exposures were excluded. The camera has gone down in the history of photography under the name Ur-Leica.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris
1932
Gelatin silver print

Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Girl with Leica
1934
Gelatin silver print

Jewgenija Lemberg, shown here, was a lover of the photographer Alexander Rodchenko for quite some time. In 1992, a print of this photo brought in a tremendous 115,000 British pounds at a Christie’s auction in London. Alexander Rodchenko was continually capturing Jewgenija Lemberg in new, surprising and bold poses – until her death in a train accident.

Heinrich Heidersberger (German, 1906-2006)
Laederstraede, Copenhagen
1935
Gelatin silver print
© Institut Heidersberger

Robert Capa (Hungarian-American, 1913-1954)
Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936
1936
Gelatin silver print

At the age of 23 and equipped with his Leica, Robert Capa embedded himself in the Spanish Civil War while on assignment for the French press. On 5 September 1936, he managed to capture the perhaps most well-known war photo of the 20th century.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Sunday on the banks of the River Marne
Juvisy, France 1938
Gelatin silver print

This photo was taken two years after the large-scale strikes that ultimately led to a fundamental improvement in social conditions. Against this backdrop, the picnic in nature is also, above all, a political message – convincing in a formal, aesthetic way, and inherently consistent and suggestive at the same time.

Evgeny Khaldey (Russian, 1917-1997)
The Flag of Victory
1945
Gelatin silver print
© Collection Ernst Volland and Heinz Krimmer, Leica Camera AG

Although this scene was staged, it loses none of its impact as an image and in no way hampers the resounding global response that it has achieved. The Red Army prevailed – there’s nothing more to convey in such a harmonious picture.

Alfred Eisenstaedt (American, born Germany 1898-1995)
VJ Day, Times Square, NY, 14. August 1945
1945
Gelatin silver print
© Alfred Eisenstaedt, 2014

This photo appeared on the cover of Life magazine and grew to become one of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s most well-known images. “People tell me,” he once said, “that when I am in heaven they will remember this picture.”

W. Eugene Smith (American, 1918-1978)
Guardia Civil, Spain
1950
Gelatin silver print
25.1 x 32.1 cm

W. Eugene Smith’s image of Guardia Civil is also a symbol of an imperious, backward Spain under the rule of Franco. For two months, W. Eugene Smith went scouting for a village and photographed it with the residents’ consent. What he shows us is a strange world: rural, archaic, as if on another planet.

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
London
1950
Gelatin silver print

Inge Morath’s photo titled “London” is well spotted, clearly composed and yet complicated in its arrangement. It also tells of a structure of domination, of hierarchies and traditions which certainly were more stable in England than in other European countries.

Franz Hubmann (Austrian, 1914-2007)
Regular guest at the Café Hawelka, Vienna
1956/1957
Gelatin silver print
© Franz Hubmann. Leica Camera AG

We shall never discover who the man is in this photo. Franz Hubmann, more or less while walking by the table, captured the guest gently balancing a cup with the tips of his fingers – viewed from above without the use of flash, without any hectic movement, and not at all staged.

Frank Horvat (French, 1928-2020)
Givenchy Hat For Jardin des Modes, Paris
1958
Gelatin silver print
Abzug 1995 / Haus der Photographie / Sammlung F.C. Gundlach Hamburg

F.C. Gundlach (German, 1926-2021)
Fashion reportage for ‘Nino’, Port of Hamburg
1958
Gelatin silver print
© F.C. Gundlach

Hans Silvester (German, b. 1938)
Steel frame assembly
about the end of the 1950s
Silver gelatin, vintage print
© Hans Silvester / Leica AG

100 Years of Leica Photography | Euromaxx

The exhibition EYES WIDE OPEN: 100 YEARS OF LEICA PHOTOGRAPHY illuminates across fourteen chapters various aspects of recent small-format photography, from journalistic strategies to documentary approaches and free artistic positions, spanning fourteen chapters. Among the artists whose work will be shown are Alexander Rodchenko, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Christer Strömholm, Robert Frank, Bruce Davidson, William Klein, William Eggleston, René Burri, Thomas Hoepker and Bruce Gilden. Following its premiere in the House of Photography at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, the exhibition will travel to Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna and Munich.

Some 500 photographs, supplemented by documentary material, including journals, magazines, books, advertisements, brochures, camera prototypes and films, will recount the history of small-format photography from its beginnings to the present day. The exhibition, which is curated by Hans-Michael Koetzle, follows the course of technological change and photographic history.

According to an entry in the workshop records, by March 1914 at the latest, Oskar Barnack, who worked as an industrial designer at Ernst Leitz in Wetzlar, completed the first functional model of a small-format camera for 35mm cinema film. The introduction of the Leica (a combination of “Leitz” and “Camera”) which was delayed until 1925 due to the war, was not merely the invention of a new camera; the small, reliable and always-ready Leica, equipped with a high-performance lens specially engineered by Max Berek, marked a paradigm shift in photography. Not only did it offer amateur photographers, newcomers and emancipated women greater access to photography; the Leica, which could be easily carried in a coat pocket, also became a ubiquitous part of everyday life. The comparatively affordable small-format camera stimulated photographic experimentation and opened up new perspectives. In general, visual strategies for representing the world became more innovative, bold and dynamic. Without question, the Leica developed by Oskar Barnack and introduced by Ernst Leitz II in 1924 was something like photography’s answer to the phenomenological needs of a new, high-speed era.

The exhibition EYES WIDE OPEN: 100 YEARS OF LEICA PHOTOGRAPHY will attempt for the first time to offer a comprehensive overview of the change in photography brought about by the invention and introduction of the Leica. Rather than isolating the history of the camera or considering it for its own sake, it will examine the visual revolution sparked by the technological innovation of the Leica. The exhibition will take an art- and cultural-historical perspective in pursuit of the question of how the photographic gaze changed as a result of the Leica and the small-format picture, and what effects the miniaturisation of photography had on the work of amateurs, artists and photojournalists. Not least, it will also seek to determine what new subjects the camera addressed with its wide range of interchangeable lenses, and how these subjects were seen in a new light: a new way of perceiving the world through the Leica viewfinder.

Among the featured photographers are those who are internationally known for their work with Leica cameras as well as amateurs and artists who have not yet been widely associated with small-format photography, including Ilja Ehrenburg, Alfons Walde, Ben Shahn and George Grosz. Important loans, some of which have never been shown before, come from the factory archives of Leica Camera AG in Wetzlar, international collections and museums, as well as private lenders (Sammlung F. C. Gundlach, Sammlung Skrein, Sammlung WestLicht).

Press release from the Deichtorhallen Hamburg website

Robert Lebeck (German, 1929-2014)
The stolen sword, Belgian Congo Leopoldville
1960
Gelatin silver print
© Robert Lebeck/ Leica Camera AG

When a young Congolese man grabs the king’s sword from the backseat of an open-top car on 29 June 1960, Robert Lebeck manages to capture the image of his life. The photo became a metaphor for the end of the descending dominance by Europeans on the African continent.

Christer Strömholm (Swedish, 1918-2002)
Nana, Place Blanche, Paris
1961
Gelatin silver print
© Christer Strömholm/Strömholm Estate, 2014

Ulrich Mack (German, b. 1934)
Wild horses in Kenya
1964
Gelatin silver print
© Ulrich Mack, Hamburg / Leica Camera AG

Ulrich Mack travelled to Africa to discover the continent as a reporter – a continent that had been battered by warmongers and massacres. But all this changed: as if in a state of ecstasy, Ulrich Mack photographed a herd of wild horses, virtually throwing himself down under the animals

Claude Dityvon (French, 1937-2008)
“L’homme à la chaise”, Bd St. Michel, 21 May 1968 [The man in the chair]
1968
Gelatin silver print
© Chris Dityvon, Paris

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
Mount Rushmore, South Dakota
1969
Gelatin silver print
Haus der Photographie / Sammlung F.C. Gundlach Hamburg

Nick Út (Vietnamese-American, b. 1951) / Associated Press
Napalm attack in Vietnam
1972
Gelatin silver print
© Nick Út/AP/ Leica Camera AG

Elliott Erwitt (American, 1928-2023)
Felix, Gladys and Rover
New York City, 1974
Gelatin silver print

Elliott Erwitt’s passion focused on dogs – for him, they were the incarnation of human beings, with fur and a tail. His photo titled “New York City” was taken for a shoe manufacturer.

René Burri (Swiss, 1933-2014)
San-Cristobál
1976

Martine Franck (British-Belgian, 1938-2012)
Swimming pool designed by Alain Capeilières
1976
Gelatin silver print

Wilfried Bauer (German, 1944-2005)
From the series Hong Kong
1985
Gelatin silver print
Originally published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung # 307, 17.01.1986
© Nachlass Wilfried Bauer/Stiftung F.C. Gundlach

Rudi Meisel (German, b. 1949)
Leningrad
1987
Gelatin silver print

Michael von Graffenried (Swiss, b. 1957)
From the series Night in Paradise, Thielle (Switzerland)
1998
Gelatin silver print
© Michael von Graffenried

Bruce Gilden (American, b. 1946)
Untitled, from the series “GO”
2001
Gelatin silver print
© Bruce Gilden 2014/Magnum Photos

Bruce Gilden is an avid portrait photographer, without his photos ever appearing posed or staged. His image of humanity arises from the flow of life, the hectic everyday goings-on or – like in “Go” – the deep pit of violence, the Mafia and corruption.