Paul Strand

Since 2008, Fundación MAPFRE has assembled a photography collection that now numbers nearly 1,300 works. This is a holding of images by key names for the development of classic photography, such as Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand and Strand himself, as well as contemporary artists including Fazal Sheikh, Graciela Iturbide and Richard Learoyd, and recognised Spanish photographers such as Joan Colom, Alberto García-Alix and Cristina García Rodero, to mention just a few of the artists represented in the collection. The opening of the new KBr Fundación MAPFRE Photography Centre in Barcelona now offers us the opportunity to regularly show the work of all these artists through collective or monographic exhibitions such as this first one on Paul Strand (1890-1976) presented today.

The exhibition, curated by Juan Naranjo, photography historian and independent curator, comprises 110 photographs of the 131 by Paul Strand in the Fundación’s collection, which is the most complete on the artist in any European institution.

Born in New York, Paul Strand embarked on his life as a photographer at the Ethical Culture School through the influence of the photographer Lewis Hine. Around 1915 he made close friends with Alfred Stieglitz, who was also a photographer and a pioneer in the introduction of avant-garde art to the city. Strand fused these influences and moved on to explore photography’s potential as an instrument for transcending human vision through his intimate, detailed portraits and his ability to capture the subtle details of mechanical and natural forms. From 1930 onwards, he travelled around the United States, Canada and Mexico to create projects centred on specific communities in the form of studies of villages through their inhabitants and their identifying cultural traits.

Paradoxically, Strand’s early photographs seem more modern than those he took between 1950 and 1960 when he focused on the life of villages and communities in New England (USA), Ghana (Africa) and Luzzara (Italy). These were places where he established a close relationship between the terrain and its inhabitants, employing an approach that can be considered documentary. Nonetheless, Strand was convinced of the innovative nature of these late images, which coincide with the evolution of the modern movement.

In 1920, working with the painter Charles Sheeler, Strand made his first move into filmmaking with Manhatta, a title inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem Mannahata and a work that narrates the fascination and vertiginous rhythm of New York over the course of a single day. The slow process of photographic development and the difficulties Strand experienced in obtaining his prints led him to focus on filmmaking and in the 1930s, he made Redes, one of the most important contributions to documentary cinema in Mexico at this period.

In a short space of time, Strand evolved from being a mere spectator to a major artist and one of the founders of “straight photography” and avant-garde film. His knowledge of contemporary art derived from his personal contacts with artists and art theorists led him to produce a type of photography that went beyond its own time. Strand was a politically committed artist, which explains his dedication to documentary photography. In the mid-1950s he left the United States and moved to Orgeval in France from where he continued with his travels, an activity he maintained until his death in 1976.

The exhibition Paul Strand Fundación MAPFRE Collections is divided into four sections based on Strand’s working method and his way of understanding the world. The first section is Geometries: Reconfiguring the gaze, which includes his earliest photographs and also images centred on the frenzied life of major cities. The next section is Landscapes: from mistiness to geometrical painterliness, which features images in which Strand looked at forms in nature in order to bring out all their beauty in a natural, accessible manner, as well as landscapes of places such as Morocco, Egypt and the Outer Hebrides. The third section, Portraits: From the concealed gaze to cultural diversity, includes much of the artist’s output in this genre. These images are almost all characterised by the respect and empathy that arose between Strand and his models, whether he met them in New York, Mexico or Italy. The exhibition concludes with the final section, Countries: Emotional cartographies. Books as project, which includes first editions of the artist's five projects that were published as photography books.

The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition has reproductions of the works on display, all of them from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections. It also includes an essay by the project’s curator, Juan Naranjo, who is a photography historian and independent curator. The publication is completed with a biography of Paul Strand by Carlos Martín, Chief Curator of Visual Arts at Fundación MAPFRE.

*The photographs may not be bled, cropped, guttered, overprinted or altered in any way, whether it be color, proportion or form. It is also not permitted to write, superimpose or add the pertinent copyright line must accompany any text on the images. The reproduction of the photographs: © Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Colecciones Fundación MAPFRE.

The reproduction of images in on-line publications and media is allowed only for exhibition publicity and dissemination where the resolution of the reproduction is a maximum 72 dpi/204 pixels in a non-downloadable format.