Paul Strand Southwest
Feature on a photography exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
In the early stages of his career, photographer Paul Strand saw an exhibition of prints by Picasso and Matisse. "He decided that he could do with photography what they were trying to do with printing techniques," said Dennis Kiel, associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Cincinnati Art Museum where "Paul Strand Southwest" hangs until Aug. 20.
After that, he began experimenting with semi-abstract images of mundane subjects, Kiel said, and by the time he spent three summers in New Mexico (1930-32), he was fully immersed in the study of shapes and forms that he could render from landscapes and portraits.
"One of the challenges for him was to find the patience to wait for the right moment," Kiel said. "The clouds and the light changed so quickly that it was hard for him to tie together the earth and the sky in the landscapes." He also photographed the ghost towns of the Southwest, seeking to find the remnants of the lives that were lived therein.
"This was at the beginning of the Great Depression," Kiel said, "and these buildings made him wonder about the pioneers and what these towns were really like at their height." Strand's most photographed subject — and because of his influence one of the most photographed and painted subjects in the Southwest — was the church at Ranchos de Taos.
In those three summers, Strand exposed 52 negatives of the church, with six of them among the 35 images in "Paul Strand Southwest." “Strand is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest American photographers of the 20th century, and this exhibition includes works never before seen on public view,” Kiel said. "Strand’s Southwest period stands out, not only as a time of intense productivity, but also as a transitional period in his life.
“His political and social ideas were shifting, and his relationships with the two most important people in his life—his wife Rebecca and his mentor, photographer Alfred Stieglitz—were disintegrating."
Kiel will present a gallery talk, "Paul Strand and the Age of Modernism," 2 p.m. July 15. There is no charge.
In a nearby gallery, a related exhibition titled "Pictorialist Photographs" explores the international photography movement that flourished from 1890 to the beginning of World War I, a precursor to Strands abstractionist impulses. Members of this movement embraced the philosophy that photography was a fine art to be judged equally with painting, drawing, printmaking, and other media, Kiel said.
Pictorialist aesthetics placed an emphasis on form, composition and atmospheric effects rather than subject matter. Drawn from the Art Museum’s permanent collection, "Pictorialist Photographs" features 25 images by important photographers such Edward Weston, Clarence White, Imogen Cunningham, Heinrich Kühn, Émile Joachim Constant Puyo, Alfred Stieglitz, Cincinnati’s Herbert Greer French and others.
