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59
STRAND, PAUL (1890-1976)
"Chris-to, Tlacochoya, Oxaca [sic], Mexico." Varnished platinum print, 9 1/2x7 1/2 inches (24.1x19.1 cm.), flush-mounted with Strand's signature, title, and date, in green ink, and numbered "Mex-det-#650" by the Paul Strand Archive and "#202" in an unidentified hand, in pencil, on verso; framed, with a gallery label on the reverse. 1933
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Notes: As a student at the Ethical Culture School in New York City, Paul Strand enrolled in extra-curricular photography classes taught by Lewis Hine, then a teacher of nature and geography. Hine introduced Strand to Gallery 291, Alfred Stieglitz's modernist art space, which influenced Strand to pursue a career as an artist-photographer.
Strand's early work explored the various painterly processes favored by the Photo Secession. However, he quickly lost his taste for all things pictorial and his work took on a distinctly modernist direction. Strand thought photography must be pure, and anything else was an insult to the viewer. In the final issue of (SC) camera work(M), which was devoted to his work, Strand states: "The full potential power of every medium is dependent upon the purity of its use, and all attempts at mixture end in such dead things as the color-etching, the photographic painting and in photography, the gum-print, oil-print, etc., in which the introduction of hand work and manipulation is merely the expression of an impotent desire to paint. It is this very lack of understanding and respect for their material, on the part of the photographers themselves which directly accounts for the consequent lack of respect on the part of the intelligent public and the notion that photography is but a poor excuse for an inability to anything else." See camera work the complete illustrations 1903-1917 (Taschen, 1997), p.780.
Strand was considered one of the premiere modern photographers of his day, interpreting his subject matter with a compassionate, unbiased eye. In 1932, after extensive travel through the United States and Europe, Strand made his way to Mexico. He spent two years there photographing the landscape, people, architecture, folk art, and religious statuary. This image of a crucifixion carving was incuded in the resulting portfolios of photogravures, "Photographs of Mexico" (1940) and "The Mexican Portfolio" (1967), which contained identical sets of plates.
It is likely that this only vintage platinum print of this image. There is one known later silver print extant. The photograph went from the Paul Strand Archive to the Weston Gallery, Carmel, California to the 7-Eleven Collection to a private collector. It is reproduced in [small caps] paul strand: retrospective monograph, the years 1915-1968 [end of small caps] (Aperture, 1971), p. 115.
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