Mixing media [Elektronisk resurs] : Cubist painterly practice in Paul Strand's photography (1915-1917) / by Portia Edwards.

• Abstract: Paul Strand began his career at a time when painters were looking away from techniques used to show illusionism and photographers were trying to gain status as artists. Although Strand had worked with the Pictorialist photographers, who emulated the work of Impressionist painters, he and Alfred Stieglitz looked to avant-garde art in Europe for a new vision. I will argue that Strand's work between 1915 and 1917 demonstrates an experimental revelation that was clearly responding to the visual challenges of the Cubist movement in painting. Strand's early work has previously been regarded as developmental, setting the stage for a so-called realist style that emerged in his later work. For example, in her dissertation (1978), Naomi Rosenblum briefly refers to the literary impact of Cubism on Strand. Her idea is further developed twenty years later in a small exhibition entitled "Cubism in American Photography" which discusses the photographer's interest in Cubism's drive toward flatness. Although both of these texts open the discussion, they do not fully address the implications of Strand's work between 1915-1917. I intend to examine those implications in this paper. Strand's interest in Cubism was atypical in photography and therefore key to understanding how the movement was adopted and promulgated in the United States. Strand began his investigations into the relationship between Cubist painting and photography when he was vacationing in Twin Lakes, Connecticut, during the summer of 1915. He arranged items, selected particular angles, and overexposed his images to emphasize the strangeness of otherwise ordinary objects. In his most famous print of the series, Untitled (1915), Strand indicates his desire to emphasize the potential of his medium both by indicating the obviousness of the object at hand and by drawing attention to the act of photographing. Here he shows a table tipped on its side, caught in a moment of transition. Its instability is captured, frozen, and then re-enlivened in the motion of the quick blasts of strong light and shadow cast on the railing behind it. The table, less instantly recognizable than the stationary porch railing, becomes a foil for the shadows in the background. Emphasis on structural form and the differentiation of materials used to reveal surface texture and pictorial depth demonstrate interests shared by Picasso and Braque in their Cubist works. Untitled, as well as the other photographs made that summer , point toward the paradox of representing three-dimensional objects on a two dimensional surface. The flatness of the selected object, in this case the tabletop, counters the spatial depth established via the relationship between table, railing and the space beyond it. Strand's peculiar use of exposure, both in taking the shot and in his developing techniques created extreme contrasts, evoking visual shifts between highlighted objects and shadowed darkness. Superficially, these works can be read as object studies. They have been relegated to the place of the painter's preparatory drawings, not dismissible, yet not quite credible as full-fledged works of art. I hope to show that they are indeed worthy of our attention as completed works, aiming toward an avant-garde vision in photography derived from painterly practice in France at that time. 

Ämnesord

Cubism  -- Influence. (LCSH)

Photography, Artistic.  (LCSH)

Personnamn

Strand, Paul, 1890-1976.