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Lot Essay
In Paul Strand's later years he chose to depict the garden at his and Hazel Strand's home in Orgeval, France. His images of the garden's flowers, foliage, and bramble express both the intimacy he felt toward this environment, so carefully nurtured over the years by Hazel, but also 'the composite whole of interdependencies' (written about in one of his last publications, On My Doorstep) which he understood to constitute the spirit of a particular place.
This present selection of images from the Orgeval series was given by the photographer to Catherine Duncan, the Paris-born writer who befriended the Strands when they moved to France, and was intended for her to reference for an unrealized publication she was working on about the entire series.
Strand wrote the below about the Orgeval photographs during the last year of his life, in his essay The Garden (1976). Here too he expands upon his science-oriented thoughts about systems of interdependencies, organizations, and relation to one's natural environment:
For the artist the moment of seeing can also be a moment of revelation. Such moments are closely related to those of the scientist when he discovers his hypothesis concur with the structures and organizations of nature, either by a lucky chance or as a result of patient research. In art as in science, both chance and research contribute to opening up new dimensions of harmony for man within his environment.
One of the most visionary scientists I have known was Harlow Shapley, the great American astronomer... in his book Beyond the Observatory, he wrote:
Continually our eyes are opened wider, the depth of our vision is increased. We see the stars evolve, the planetary surfaces like that of our earth change with the flowing of time. We learn that primitive plants and elementary animals develop through the ages into complicated organisms, including those with high sensitivity to their environment. Man, too has evolved and so have his social organizations. Why, then should we not expect the penetrating urge toward change that permeates the universe to include the growth of men's groping philosophies? The answer is we do expect it; to some extent we witness it. And we note that evolution itself evolves.
To come to this quotation by chance was like an encounter with my late friend, who as a scientist, was saying things such as I have tried to express through photography over sixty years. Both artist and scientist are committed to processes which complement each other's vision. For this portfolio, which includes some of the most recent photographs I have made, my observatory has been The Garden.
This present selection of images from the Orgeval series was given by the photographer to Catherine Duncan, the Paris-born writer who befriended the Strands when they moved to France, and was intended for her to reference for an unrealized publication she was working on about the entire series.
Strand wrote the below about the Orgeval photographs during the last year of his life, in his essay The Garden (1976). Here too he expands upon his science-oriented thoughts about systems of interdependencies, organizations, and relation to one's natural environment:
For the artist the moment of seeing can also be a moment of revelation. Such moments are closely related to those of the scientist when he discovers his hypothesis concur with the structures and organizations of nature, either by a lucky chance or as a result of patient research. In art as in science, both chance and research contribute to opening up new dimensions of harmony for man within his environment.
One of the most visionary scientists I have known was Harlow Shapley, the great American astronomer... in his book Beyond the Observatory, he wrote:
Continually our eyes are opened wider, the depth of our vision is increased. We see the stars evolve, the planetary surfaces like that of our earth change with the flowing of time. We learn that primitive plants and elementary animals develop through the ages into complicated organisms, including those with high sensitivity to their environment. Man, too has evolved and so have his social organizations. Why, then should we not expect the penetrating urge toward change that permeates the universe to include the growth of men's groping philosophies? The answer is we do expect it; to some extent we witness it. And we note that evolution itself evolves.
To come to this quotation by chance was like an encounter with my late friend, who as a scientist, was saying things such as I have tried to express through photography over sixty years. Both artist and scientist are committed to processes which complement each other's vision. For this portfolio, which includes some of the most recent photographs I have made, my observatory has been The Garden.