His modernist landscapes and stunning portraits, stun me, stop me in my tracks. I stare in wonder. With these in particular, I'm drawn back to the years I lived in Vermont (1976-1982, 1985-1994).
... to show specifics and generalities together and his resolve to present these components in formally innovative ways. ... combining the concrete and the universal is at the center of what makes art important. ... if generalizations are in a sense the final reward for our attention, it is the specifics that are the pleasure.
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| Paul Strand, Mr Bennett, Vermont 1944 in Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994 |
Among the greatest architectural pictures ever made
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| Paul Strand, Church, Vermont 1944 in Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994 |
... he off-centered symmetrical buildings occasionally going so far as to frustrate simplistic documentary expectations by shaving away the smallest edge of the subject, as in the view at the end of the book for the Vermont church in 1944 (it is, I think, among the greatest architectural pictures ever made).
It changed my life as a photographer
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| Paul Strand, Toward the Sugarhouse, Vermont 1944 in Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994 |
... other pictures surrender a significant part of their foreground to what looks to be, by common standards, not the subject .. not to mention pictures framed by large quantities of the apparently irrelevant, as with the photograph of the little fragment of a view of birches seen from inside what appears to be a barn. The photographer seems not to have taken the necessary step to get close enough to the opening and for his laziness gotten a picture two-thirds board (and what a wonderful picture it is ... I think it changed my life as a photographer).
Robert Adams - Why People Photograph
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| Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994 |
Could anyone have loved this sad country with its unnumbered ironies so much that a regard for it wold be the foundation of a life's work?
Biographical Note
Born Nathaniel Paul Stransky in Brooklyn (October 16, 1890) to Jewish Bohemian immigrants, Paul Strand attended the Ethical Culture Fieldstone School where Lewis Hine was a teacher, and on a photo club outing, was introduced to Alfred Stieglitz et al at the 271 Gallery. Strand became one of the leading Modernist photographers. ... In 1950, Strand left the United States for Europe as the House Committee on Un-American Activities was sweeping many of Strand's associates into its web.
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