1890-1976

By breaking down prevailing photographic ideals of technique and aesthetics, Paul Strand became outward- or object-focused.  Initially he synthesized the work presented at Gallery 291.  Later he was championed by Stieglitz in solo exhibitions and featured in several issues of Camera Work.  Soft-focus to clean-edged “straight” photography preceded Strand’s hybrid of realism and abstraction, which he called organic realism.  His revolutionary candid portraiture issued “a quality of being” – emotional content through form.  He left America for France during the McCarthy era and continued making still photographs.  In 1945, The Museum of Modern Art mounted a Strand retrospective, its first for a photographer.  It was followed by similar shows at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.