medium. It had become simultaneously a popular
pastime, a more commercialized professional pur-
suit, and a mode of artistic expression.
Strand’s attendance at the Ethical Culture School
high school brought him into contact with Progres-
sive thought and in particular the photographic
work of Lewis W. Hine, who undoubtedly commu-
nicated his interest in social photography to his stu-
dents. Hine in turn introduced Strand to Alfred
Stieglitz, at the time spokesman for the most ad-
vanced wing of American aesthetic camera expres-
sion known as the Photo-Secession. Contacts with
these two figures and with the ideas emanating from
them combined to form the central core of Strand’s
concept of photographic art as being concerned with
real life but also as being formally resolved in the
manner of all notable artistic expression.
Introduced to modern art at Stieglitz’s Photo-
Secession Gallery 291 and at the Armory Show of
1913, Strand became one of the first American photo-
graphers to seriously experiment with cubist ideas
while turning the camera lens on real objects. The
resulting images, made in the summer of 1916 while
vacationing at Twin Lakes, Connecticut, were an un-
precedented group of geometric abstractions based
on bowls, fruit, and structural elements. In the same
year, he turned his attention to picturing the grittiness
of urban New York—at the time considered an ‘‘inar-
tistic’’ theme suitable for documentation. His views of
commonplace structures and his portraits of ordinary
street people—notably a blind newspaper vendor—
were recognized for their freshness of vision and their
structural rigor.
In 1920, Strand continued his interest in the city
when he took up another aspect of his career that
was to prove significant for his future activities. He
and painter-photographer Charles Sheeler collabo-
rated on a short film entitledManhatta, based on
Walt Whitman’sLeaves of Grass.This work was
expressive of the city’s dazzle and energy in a man-
ner similar to Strand’s still work of the time.
Before being called for army duty in World War
I, Strand exhibited at Gallery 291 and his work
was featured in the last two issues of the Photo-
Secession journalCamera Work. Throughout the
1920s, he and his first wife, Rebecca James, main-
tained a close friendship with Stieglitz and his wife,
Georgia O’Keeffe, helping out with commissions,
working on publications, and visiting frequently in
New York City and their Summer cottage Lake
George, New York. While earning his living during
this period as a free lance motion picture camera-
man, Strand was yet able to produce a series of
unprecedented still images of machines, starting
with views of his Akeley movie camera and
expanding to include the machine tools used in
the camera’s repair facility. This series was fol-
lowed in the latter part of the decade by intense
close-ups of natural forms, as Strand, becoming
less entranced with the commercialism of the era,
turned towards nature and the simpler life. His
work from this period was exhibited first at the
Intimate Gallery and then at An American Place,
both under the directorship of Stieglitz.
In 1932, Strand’s career as an independent cine-
matographer was affected by the move to the West
Coast of the movie business. In addition, finding
himself agitated by developments in both his person-
al life and in society at large, he left New York for
New Mexico. Shortly thereafter, he traveled to Mex-
ico in order to aid the newly installed government in
the production of socially relevant images. His
efforts resulted in a series of still images of peasants,
architecture, and religious statuary, published in
1940 (by his second wife, Virginia Stevens) as a port-
folio of gravure prints entitledThe Mexican Portfo-
lio. His primary charge, however, was the creation of
a re-enacted documentary film, entitledRedes (The
Wave), financed by the Ministry of Education.
Filmed in the seaport village of Alvarado, it con-
cerned a strike by Mexican fishermen against a rapa-
cious owner of the boat and its catch.
Despite an unsuccessful trip to the Soviet Union
in 1935 to investigate working with film director
Sergei Eisenstein, Strand continued his involvement
with documentary film. On his return to the United
States, he worked on the federally funded Resettle-
ment Administration film entitledThe Plow That
Broke the Plains. Settling once again in New York
City, he became president of a newly established
production company, Frontier Films. In this capac-
ity, he helped create a series of politically concerned
documentaries, the best known of which isNative
Land, based on the findings of the LaFollette Senate
investigating committee about the prevalence of
labor spies in industry. He also became active as an
advisor and teacher at the Photo League, an organi-
zation of still photographers concerned with por-
traying street life in working-class neighborhoods.
These activities established Strand as a left-thinking
individual whose opinions were to become unwel-
come in the Cold War atmosphere that followed the
end of the Second World War.
By the mid-1940s, the difficulty of financing doc-
umentary films impelled Strand to consider other
forms for disseminating his work. Following a retro-
spective exhibition of his still photographs at the
Museum of Modern Art in 1945, he and acting
curator Nancy Newhall embarked on a publication
project that eventually appeared in 1950 asTime inSTRAND, PAUL