Paul Strand: Southwest - Hardcover

3.75

20 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1931788464 ISBN 13: 9781931788465

Publisher: Aperture, 2005

For Paul Strand, the great pioneer of Modernism, the summers of 1926 and 1930-1932 were a return to experimentation and periods of great artistic growth. He worked in makeshift darkrooms--one in a hotel basement and another above the Taos movie theater. The Southwest period brought not only artistic renewal, but also personal turmoil. His political and social ideas were shifting, and his relationship with the two most important people in his life--his wife Rebecca and his mentor Alfred Stieglitz--were disintegrating. This book reconstructs, in an intimate, visual way, the emotional and creative swirl around Paul Strand, through beautiful reproductions of his images from the period and a comprehensive collection of notes, illustrations and ephemera. While a handful of Strand's Southwest photographs have been previously published, this period of his outstanding career remains largely unexplored. "Paul Strand Southwest" presents many images for the first time, including dramatic landscapes, decayed ghost towns, the noble architecture of adobe churches and his final austere portraits of Rebecca.

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About the Author:

Paul Strand was one of the great photographers of the twentieth century. As a youth, he studied under Lewis Hine and went on to draw acclaim from such illustrious sources as Alfred Stieglitz. After World War II, Strand traveled around the world to photograph, and, in the process, created a dynamic and significant body of work. A major retrospective of his work was shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in October 2014.

Review:

"These are some of Strand's most lofty and severe photographs, reflecting in part the coming dissolutions of his marriage and his friendship with Alfred Stieglitz. Fifty photographs, some previously unpublished, are beautifully reproduced, with texts that explore the background of this crucial period in the life of a photographic giant." Alan G. Artner --The Chicago Tribune

"...Paul Strand: Southwest is a unique volume combining both his stunning photographs of this part of the country, as well as a bit of photographic history, and a glimpse of the turbulence in his personal life that corresponded with his visits there." --B&W

"For Paul Strand, the great pioneer of modernism, the summers of 1926 and 1930-1932 were a return to experimentation. The Southwest became his laboratory. With makeshift darkrooms- one in a hotel basement and another above the Taos movie theater- these were years of critical artistic growth. Absorbing the SouthWest's complex cultural history, he began to shape his ideas of photographing a region in depth." --HotShoe International

"Not reportage in the strict sense of the world, but a brilliant study of the people, places and landscapes of New Mexico in the 1930s." --The British Journal of Photography

"Expansive vistas, weatherworn facades, lined faces: Paul Strand Southwest reproduces the modernist photographer's images of the American Southwest from 1930 through 1932, turbulent years for both the country and the artist." --Town & Country

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