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Paul Strand

The Mexican Portfolio

Second Edition, 1967

Born in New York City in 1890, Paul Strand pioneered the American modernist movement in photography. Strand first studied photography under the tutelage of Lewis Hine, who introduced him to Alfred Stieglitz. By 1909 Strand had set up his own commercial studio. During this time he did work on the side in a pictorialist style that was exhibited at the New York Camera Club. Strand’s shift from soft-focus pictorialism to a sharp-focus style was a gradual one. During the years 1915-1917, he still made soft-focus images, but began to make more modernist, abstracted compositions. Stieglitz championed the photographer’s work by devoting the last two issues of Camera Work to Strand and giving him his own show at the gallery 291. By the late teens and early 1920s Strand had abandoned pictorialism altogether, becoming the leading American modernist photographer along with Alfred Stieglitz. Influenced by modernist trends in other media, Strand made abstracted close-up views of nature as well as sharply defined urban images.

During World War I Strand served as an x-ray technician, then returned to the U.S. to work as a freelance filmmaker. In the 1930s he headed to Mexico to work as both a cinematographer and photographer and would later publish his work in 1940 in The Mexican Portfolio. By 1943 Strand had abandoned motion pictures and completely devoted himself to still photography. During the 1950s and 60s he traveled throughout Europe and Ghana, making several books, Un Paese, Tir a Murhain and Ghana: An African Portrait. He was honored for his work by many institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Aperture, ASMP, the Met in New York, and Los Angeles County Museum. Strand died at his home in France in 1976.