COLLECTION NAME:
The AMICA Library
Record
AMICA ID:
CMA_.1985.95
AMICA Library Year:
1998
Object Type:
Photographs
Creator Name:
Strand, Paul
Creator Nationality:
North American; American
Creator Role:
artist
Creator Dates/Places:
1890 - 1976
Biography:
Paul Strand American, 1890-1976Paul Strand (born in New York City) was an influential advocate of the straight approach in creative photography. While a student at the Ethical Culture School in New York, Strand studied photography with Lewis Hine (1907-8). In 1908 he joined the Camera Club of New York and three years later traveled through Europe, making softly focused, manipulated photographs in the popular pictorial style. In the fall of 1911 Strand established himself as a freelance commercial photographer in New York and two years later began visiting the exhibitions of modern art at Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession galleries. Between 1914-17, stimulated by his contact with Stieglitz and avant-garde American and European art, Strand abandoned pictorialism for images that expressed an interest in formal concerns and the dynamism of contemporary urban life. He experimented with abstraction and movement and candid portraiture of people on the street. Excited by Strand's innovative work, Stieglitz exhibited his pictures at "291" in 1916 and featured them in the final two issues of Camera Work (October 1916; June 1917). In 1917 Strand expressed his belief in a pure photographic aesthetic, stressing the objectivity of the medium and its ability to produce "a range of almost infinite tonal values which lie beyond the skill of the human hand." The following year Strand served as an x-ray technician in the Army Medical Corps. After his year of service, he returned to New York and in 1920 collaborated with painter/photographer Charles Sheeler on the avant-garde film Manhatta (originally titled New York the Magnificent). Throughout the 1920s Strand made his living as a filmmaker, only occasionally making photographs. He pursued both film and creative photography in the 1930s and early 1940s; by 1945, however, when his images were featured in a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, still photography had once more become his primary focus. After visiting France in 1950 he decided to settle there, and over the following two decades traveled and photographed in Europe and Africa. Strand's work has been widely exhibited. Retrospectives have been mounted by the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1945), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1971, and tour), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1973), and numerous traveling exhibitions have been organized, including Paul Strand: An American Vision by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1990). He was named an Honorary Member of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (1963) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1973). M.M.
Gender:
M
Creator Birth Place:
New York, NY
Creator Death Place:
Orgeval, France
Creator Name-CRT:
Paul Strand
Title:
The Family, Luzzara
Title Type:
Primary
View:
Full View
Creation Date:
1953
Creation Start Date:
1953
Creation End Date:
1953
Materials and Techniques:
gelatin silver print
Classification Term:
Photography
Dimensions:
Image: 11.7cm x 15cm
AMICA Contributor:
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Owner Location:
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
ID Number:
1985.95
Credit Line:
Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund
Inscriptions:
Written in pencil on verso: "14/"; "Farm Family---Luzzara 1953 / Paul Strand [signed]"; "197 / 6 / 6 [1/2] / 6 [3/4] / 7 [1/2] / 8 / 9 [1/4]"; "156"
Copyright:
Copyright ? Aperture Foundation, Inc., Paul Strand Archive
Context:
The Family, Luzzara is one of a remarkable set of images Paul Strand made during the course of five months spent in the Italian village of Luzzara, in the Po River Valley. This group portrait depicts the Lusetti family of tenant farmers in front of their house. The matriarch of the family is framed in the darkened doorway, surrounded by five of her eight surviving sons. Positioning the family members frontally and close to the camera, Strand conveyed very specific information about their physical characteristics and personalities, even though he intended them to be seen as enduring symbols of universal human qualities.
Related Image Identifier Link:
CMA_.1985.95.tif
