"TOWARD A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING: PAUL STRAND AT WORK". Collectif. Editions Steidl, Göttingen. 2007. Edition originale. Imprimé en Allemagne. in-8 carré, couverture toilée marron titrée avec une photo noir & blanc sur le premier plat. Non paginé (72p). Texte en anglais de Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, illustré de 25 reproductions photographiques noir & blanc, hors texte, par Paul Strand, décomposé en 3 sections : Portraits, Architecture, Landscape. Ouvrage réalisé dans le cadre de l'exposition éponyme à la Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, du 22 Février au 31 Mars 2007.

 

"In 1917 Alfred Stieglitz, the presiding master of American photography, devoted a special double issue of his journal Camera Work to the photographs of the 27-year-old Paul Strand. As so often before, Stieglitz's choice was prophetic. The Strand double issue was to be the last in the series, as if to mark the end of one era and the beginning of another. Although their subject matter was conventional - portraits, still-lifes, landscapes both urban and rural - Strand's photographs broke decisively with the more self-consciously artistic pictorial images that he had once made and that Camera Work tended to feature. Strand's pictures were uncompromising and "direct," the description Stieglitz used repeatedly in a brief essay: "[Strand's] work is rooted in the best traditions of photography. His vision is potential. His work is pure. It is direct. It does not rely upon tricks of process.... These photographs are the direct expression of today." What Stieglitz was describing was modernism, for Strand had fully absorbed the principles of the experimental art that Stieglitz promoted in America. Strand believed that he had to be faithful to what he considered the fundamental quality of his chosen medium, in his words "an absolute unqualified objectivity ... the very essence of photography, its contribution and at the same time its limitation, " The directness that had so impressed Stieglitz was to become a hallmark of all Strand's photographs…"

 

Ref LPB1028