1. The artist Paul Strand uses shadow and light to contrast the outlines of shapes. The photographs that Strand takes boasts the shadows as they are elongated and the dark sections of the composition stand out the most, imposing the powers of uniformity and anonymity. Strand deliberately destroyed perspective to build a powerful composition from tonal planes and rhythmic patterns. He combined realism and abstraction is his photographs of landscapes and close up of rocks and plants. In doing this, he achieved a synthesis in a style he described as organic realism.

2.  The american artist paul strand had a long and productive career with the camera. His pictorialist studies of the 1910s, followed by the coolly seductive machine photograps of the 1920s, like the contemporary work of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped define the canon of early American modernism and its premium on elegant print. Experimenting with Charles Sheeler, Strand then pushed further in describing the movement of the city in the short film Manhatta (1920). In the 1930s he became seriously involved with documentary film and, from the 1940s until the end of his life he was committed to making photographic books of the highest quality. After 1950, when he relocated to France, landscape, architecture, and portraiture (the traditional humanist genres) continued to inspire Strand to embody the spirit of his subjects in the very materials of the photographic print. The high regard for his mature work suggests that he succeeded in his goals, and that his standards of excellence and his constancy of subject answered very human needs in a century of radical change.

3. Write a paragraph discussing the work, it's lighting, mood, and how you think it was achieved (minimum of 50 words).

NewYork, Negative 1915; print 1916

Photogravure

5 1/5 × 6 1/2 in

13.2 × 16.4 cm

INSTITUTION:

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Citation:

Artsy.net. (2016). Paul Strand | New York (Negative 1915; print 1916) | Artsy. [online] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/paul-strand-new-york [Accessed 19 Sep. 2016].

The light was in the top left corner of composition looking down onto the people walking away. The composition contrasts the people's shadow with the large dark structure, the people’s shadow is elongated and makes them seem bigger than they actually are. The people seem to be walking towards something, and the atmosphere seems dark, gloomy and depressing. I think that this photograph was achieved by setting a false lens on the camera so that they subject matter (people) didn’t notice that their photo was being taken, at a distance behind the people walking away from the camera at an angle.