The Photographs of Paul Strand, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Three Roads Taken: The Photographs of Paul Strand
Getty Center, Los Angeles
May 10 – September 4, 2005

“Three important roads opened for me… My work grew out of a response, first, to trying to understand the new developments in painting; second, a desire to express certain feelings I had about New York where I lived; third… I wanted to see if I could photograph people without their being aware of the camera.” — Paul Strand

One of the country’s most profound photographers, Paul Strand (1890–1976) developed a modernist aesthetic that revealed itself in over half a century’s work with the camera, shaping the development of American photography. The power and impact of his creations are explored in the new exhibition Three Roads Taken: The Photographs of Paul Strand, on view at the Getty Center.

The exhibition features approximately 75 of the 186 Strand prints in the Getty Museum’s collection. The works on view trace the development of Paul Strand’s aesthetic as he sought to express the principles of modern art through photography, convey a sense of place, and create truthful portraits of people. The exhibition presents these three approaches in a chronological survey of the photographer’s work, and includes a continuous screening of Paul Strand’s experimental and influential short film Manhatta, made in 1920 and considered the first avant-garde film in America. 

Three Roads Taken: The Photographs of Paul Strand is part of American Visions, a sequence of four exhibitions featuring works by some of the country’s preeminent practitioners drawn from the Getty Museum’s renowned photographs collection. Together, the exhibitions offer insight into 75 years of photographic innovation, exploring the medium’s versatility as a new creative language used to document reality and as a means for artistic expression. Three Roads Taken will be on view concurrently with The Photographs of Frederick Sommer: A Centennial Tribute, offering a rare opportunity to explore and contrast the almost parallel growth of two very different creative sensibilities. In September, American Visions will focus on photojournalism with Scene of the Crime: Photo by Weegee and Pictures for the Press, featuring sometimes sensational tabloid pictures by the great crime photographer Weegee and memorable news images recording key events in American history from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Paul Strand’s work reflects a particular moment in the history of photography, when a modernist vision was explored, defined, and celebrated. He saw the medium as an expressive fine art, taking inspiration, in particular, from Cézanne’s landscape paintings, which he admired for their ability to unite depth and space. Strand paid careful attention to the structure of his own compositions and the interaction of key elements in his images by exploiting line, shape, and mass. In his still lifes, Strand uses light and shadow to define near-abstract arrangements of shapes and forms. And although more documentary in nature, his portraits and cityscapes, particularly those of New York City, are as equally composed. With its nontraditional perspective and elongated format, one image titled City Hall Park, New York captures the vitality of the modern metropolis while evoking Japanese scrolls.

Paul Strand’s interest in expressing the truth was guided by his search for a sense of humanism in his subjects—something he referred to as the “essential character” of a person. Early in his career, he strove to achieve this by using a camera fitted with a false lens that would allow him to create portraits of people without them being aware of it.

The exhibition includes a continuous screening of Strand’s influential short film Manhatta, made in 1920 with fellow American photographer Charles Sheeler (1883–1965). The film attempts to capture the spirit of New York in seven minutes, tracing a day in the life of the city, beginning with the arrival of the Staten Island Ferry and ending with a sunset on the Hudson River. The sequences in Manhatta display a similar approach to the still photographic work of both Strand and Sheeler, with extreme camera angles used to capture the dynamic character of the city.

PAUL STRAND: BIOGRAPHY

Born in New York in 1890, Paul Strand received his first camera, a Kodak Brownie, when he was 12. He attended the Ethical Culture School in New York from 1907–1909, which shaped Strand’s outlook with its humanist emphasis on creative, critical, and pragmatic approaches to learning. It was here that Strand met and studied with Lewis Hine, whose powerful images of child labor helped guide Strand’s social ideals.

As a young man, Paul Strand was exposed to modern European art at the 1913 Armory Show and at Alfred Stieglitz’s “291” Gallery, where works of art by Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Duchamp were on display for the first time in America. Paul Strand took inspiration from the modernist movement and, in turn, explored its ideas and themes in his photography.

After serving in the army during World War II, Paul Strand experimented with filmmaking, which he practiced in the 1920s through the 1930s. A founding member of Frontier Films, a New York documentary film cooperative, and a director of the Photo League, which was dedicated to social photography in the United States, Strand’s affiliation with both organizations reflected his growing involvement with leftist politics. Finding the political climate inhospitable with the rise of McCarthyism, Paul Strand left the U.S. in 1950 to permanently settle in France, where he worked until his death on March 31, 1976. Throughout his career, Strand applied elements of modernism, realism, and portraiture to all of his works, making for an interesting and diverse body of work that reflects the three roads taken.

RELATED PUBLICATION: In Focus: Paul Strand. Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum

Anne M. Lyden

Featuring significant examples of Paul Strand’s far-reaching and powerful work from a 40-year period, this newest addition to the In Focus series is a perfect accompaniment to the current exhibition Three Roads Taken: The Photographs of Paul Strand.

Three Roads Taken is sponsored by Merrill Lynch.

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www.getty.edu