It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness. - Paul Strand *webwork 5*

 

Jerome Liebling, Butterfly Boy (1949)

 

 Wire Wheel, New York, 1920, Paul Strand

 

[Geometric Backyards, New York], 1917
Paul Strand

• Paul Strand pioneered the American modernist movement in photography.
• He was born in New York City in 1890 to Bohemian parents, and died in 1976.
• Strand first studied photography under Lewis Hine, who actually introduced him to Alfred Stieglitz.
• By 1909, Strand had his own commercial studio, and on the side he worked in a pictorialist style.
• Gradually over years he shifted from the soft-focus pictorialism, to a sharp-focused kind of style.
• By the early 1920's, Strand abandoned pictorialism entirely, making more modern and abstract compositions, and becoming the leading American modernist along with Alfred Stieglitz.
• At that time he made abstracted close-up views of nature, as well as crisply defined urban images.

•  Some of Strand's other work showed 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 supported using their art to promote social and political causes.

• In his next couple decades, Strand worked in motion pictures, and as well at it than as photography.
• Paul's Strand's modernist photography is absolutely amazing.  His compositions are beautiful, and I love that geometric angles can be found in shadows and everyday things.