PHOTOGRAPHS
Strand, Paul
U.S. (1890 - 1976)
Porch Shadows
1914 - 1915
Photogravure
9 1/2 x 6 5/8 in. (24.1 x 16.8 cm) image size; 11 3/4 x 8 1/8 in. (29.8 x 20.6 cm) sheet size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company
FA 97.165

While still in his mid-twenties, Paul Strand dazzled the New York art world with a series of photographs that were among the most innovative being made in America at the time. The still life and abstract compositions -- of which Porch Shadows was one -- explored pure form divorced from its surroundings, emphasizing light, shape and line. Strand's subject matter ranged from abstraction to portraits and street scenes, and later, in 1932, he took up filmmaking. As a student of Lewis Hine and friend of Alfred Steiglitz and other modern artists, Strand fused an interest in the issues of his time with creative intensity and breadth of vision. Both Hine and Stieglitz were convinced that art had the power to change society, and they provided Strand with the social, moral and aesthetic framework on which he based his life's work. In turn, each in his own way contributed greatly to photography being recognized as a unique and important art form. -- Label copy for After Art: Rethinking 150 Years of Photography, December 4, 1994 to March 26, 1995.

Paul Strand was first introduced to photography by noted social activist and documentarian Lewis Hine, who also introduced him to Alfred Stieglitz and Photo-Secessionist circle in 1907. Strand began to make, exhibit, and publish pictures in the pictorialist style advocated by Stieglitz, and the two remained close for many years. Which of the two first began to make sharp-focus, unmanipulated photographic prints in the 1910s has been the subject of much critical debate, but it is clear that in the period 1915-17 both left pictorialism to experiment with a new photographic realism that Strand described as "absolute unqualified objectivity." No longer were they making photographs intended to look like handmade pictures, they were simply allowing the camera to produce pictures of new, often abstract subjects in strong, undramatic lighting conditions and sharp focus. Porch Shadows is an example of Strand's new aesthetic. The camera has made a bold graphic image--reminiscent of recent abstract painting in Europe--that is the result of careful selection and framing, rather than deliberate manipulation of camera, negative, and/or print. -- Label copy for The Photographic Impulse: A Critical History of Photography, The Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection, Cincinnati Art Museum, October 12, 2001 to January 6, 2002.