Untitled - Issues of Image Magazine - George Eastman House

eform when he was photographing these people
of the streets, but he was not using his
camera in the manner of Jacob Riis to expose
the mistreatment of the working classes. He
confessed: "I photographed these people because
I felt that they were all people who
life had battered into some sort of extraordinary
interest and, in a way, nobility." The subject of
"Blind Woman", his masterpiece of this group
of portraits, appealed to him simply because
she had "an absolutely unforgettable and noble
face." In his statements about his city portraits,
Strand sounds very much like one of the New
York Realist painters — perhaps Robert Henri
or John Sloan, of the "Ashcan School" or "The
Eight." This group of artists, like Strand, portrayed
the daily activity of common people, not
to point out social injustices, but because their
lives reflected the human drama in its most
natural and telling form, for example, Sloan's
painting "Three A.M." (1909). In this connection,
Stieglitz's representation of the lower
classes in "The Steerage" (1907) could also be
seen as a source of inspiration for Strand's
individual portraits, and we should accept the
possibility that this realistic image influenced
the young photographer.
Stieglitz's discovery of Strand's fresh talent
seems to have rejuvenated the older man and
helped to restore some of the original vitality
of 291. Stieglitz, as we have seen, saw in Strand
the fulfillment of his highest hopes for artistic
photography, and during the last few years of
291 he devoted himself to the celebration of
Strand's genius. He wrote of Strand in Camera
Work:
His work is rooted in the best traditions
of photography. His vision is potential. His
work is pure. It is direct. It does not rely
upon tricks of process. In whatever he
does there is applied intelligence. In the
history of photography there are but few
photographers who, from the point of view
of expression, have really done work of
any importance. And by importance we
mean work that has some relatively lasting
quality, that element which gives all art its
real significance. 7
The one-man show Stieglitz had promised
Strand took place between March 13 and April
3, 1916, and the last two issues of Camera
Work were devoted mainly to reproductions of
Strand's recent photographs. Just as Steichen's
photographs and ideas permeated the early volumes
of Camera Work, Strand's dominated the
last two issues of that periodical. Stieglitz had
thus come full circle. It is fitting that Stieglitz's
most important years of patronage came to an
end with the recognition of an artist working in
the medium which was his own first love —
photography.
Notes
1 This article is based in large part on the section on
Paul Strand in my forthcoming book on the artists of the
Stieglitz circle, Stieglitz and the American Avant-Garde,
to be published in 1977 by New York Graphic Society,
Boston.
2 All direct quotations or paraphrases from Strand's
statements were based on interviews with Strand conducted
in 1971, 1974, and 1975. I am indebted to the
photographer for generously making himself available
for interviews when he was in poor health. I am also
grateful to him for reading and correcting an earlier
version of this paper. Although Francis Bruguiere (1880-
1945) stated that he did abstract photographs as early as
1912, there are no works of that date to support his
claim. It is likely that his memory was faulty on this
point.
3 When I first talked with Strand, he could find no examples
of his work from the period before 1914-15. However,
in May, 1975, as I was preparing this paper for
publication, he and Mrs. Strand found a large cache of
his early 3Vi" x .4 1 A" glass positives in a storage warehouse
in New York. The Strands generously allowed me
to study these works, which reveal the photographer's
pre-1915 evolution and which also include other previously
unpublished examples of his abstract photography,
1914-17.
4 The dates of these 291 shows are as follows: Cezanne,
1911 (watercolors); Matisse, 1908 (drawings, lithographs,
watercolors, and etchings), 1910 (drawings and reproductions
of paintings), 1912 (sculpture and drawings); Picasso,
1911 (drawings and watercolors); Picasso and
Braque, 1914 (drawings and paintings); Brancusi, 1914
(sculpture).
5 The photographs by Strand discussed in this article are
well known to students of modern American photography
because they were beautifully and faithfully reproduced,
by photogravure, in the last two issues of Camera Work.
However, the Camera Work photogravures are somewhat
smaller than the platinum prints from which they were
made. For example, the original images of "Abstraction,
Bowls," and "Blind Woman," both in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, measure 13V4" x 9 3 A&" and 13 3 /a" x 10V2"
respectively. The steps in Strand's printing process,
which the photographer described to me, are worth reviewing.
The photographs discussed here were taken on
3'/4" x 4 1 /4" glass negatives, from which he made glass
positives of the same size. He then put these into an
enlarger and projected them onto a larger negative,
which, when developed and printed, would yield contact
prints of the size of those in the Metropolitan Museum,
cited above.
6 Strand no longer owns the original English Ensign reflex
camera which he used for his early photographs.
Much later he purchased one like it for sentimental reasons.
The camera reproduced here is from the collection
of Tom and Elinor Burnside, Pawlet, Vermont. I am grateful
to them for supplying the photograph.
7 Camera Work, XLVII1, October 1916, pp. 11-12.
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