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拍品专文
The five photographs by Paul Strand offered in the Mann collection form one of the most important groupings by the artist to ever come up in a single auction. The negative dates for the five photographs range from 1916 to 1927, presenting a tight and focused view into a particularly celebrated period in Strand’s life. Like his contemporaries Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, Strand initially adopted a romantic and atmospheric Pictorialist style before embracing the modernist tenets of photography, largely predicated on clarity, linearity and tonality, starting in the mid-1910s.
Among Strand’s earlier avant-garde gestures was his practice of photographing un-staged portraits of people found amidst his urban environment. The nature of street photography, as we think of it today, wouldn’t develop until the advent of the handheld 35mm camera, such as the Leica. Portraiture to this point had been largely relegated to the stately confines of the studio. As an experimenter with early iterations of street photography, however, Strand relinquished much control over his subjects, and opted for a reactionary, more modern approach to portraiture by photographing everyday, commonplace people. Two such portraits are offered in this collection: Blind Woman, New York, and Man, Five Points Square, New York (Lot 14) both taken in 1916.
Blind Woman, New York was originally published in Camera Work no. 49/50, 1917, by Strand’s mentor, Stieglitz. (In this issue of Camera Work, there is a note accompanying the image reading, ‘The original prints are 11 x 14’). By using a deceptive lens that was stealthily pointed in one direction while camera’s front aimed in another, Strand captured what would ultimately become one of his most renowned images. The woman, a peddler, is wearing around her neck a metal plate that identifies her disability and lists her license number (a requirement for beggars during the Progressive Era, 1890s–1920s). As a woman, a peddler and a blind individual, the subject is buried under three levels of social invisibility. In Strand’s photograph, however, she is immortalized and lent credence as well as visibility, the latter being of particular irony given her own inability to see herself depicted in the photograph. This image was subsequently lauded for its seamless merging of social humanism with modernist sensibility.
The 11 x 14 inch contact print offered in this lot was printed in 1945, one of nine such prints made by Strand in anticipation of his pending retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). Of the remaining 11 x 14 inch contact prints, one is in the collection of MoMA; three at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and another at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York owns the only extant platinum print of this image.
There are about ten 8 x 10 inch prints of this image, which Strand generally used as press prints. The current lot is the only known version that is mounted to another print, On my doorstep (see illustration). Early gelatin silver prints of this image are exceedingly rare at auction, the last one having been offered in 2001.
Among Strand’s earlier avant-garde gestures was his practice of photographing un-staged portraits of people found amidst his urban environment. The nature of street photography, as we think of it today, wouldn’t develop until the advent of the handheld 35mm camera, such as the Leica. Portraiture to this point had been largely relegated to the stately confines of the studio. As an experimenter with early iterations of street photography, however, Strand relinquished much control over his subjects, and opted for a reactionary, more modern approach to portraiture by photographing everyday, commonplace people. Two such portraits are offered in this collection: Blind Woman, New York, and Man, Five Points Square, New York (Lot 14) both taken in 1916.
Blind Woman, New York was originally published in Camera Work no. 49/50, 1917, by Strand’s mentor, Stieglitz. (In this issue of Camera Work, there is a note accompanying the image reading, ‘The original prints are 11 x 14’). By using a deceptive lens that was stealthily pointed in one direction while camera’s front aimed in another, Strand captured what would ultimately become one of his most renowned images. The woman, a peddler, is wearing around her neck a metal plate that identifies her disability and lists her license number (a requirement for beggars during the Progressive Era, 1890s–1920s). As a woman, a peddler and a blind individual, the subject is buried under three levels of social invisibility. In Strand’s photograph, however, she is immortalized and lent credence as well as visibility, the latter being of particular irony given her own inability to see herself depicted in the photograph. This image was subsequently lauded for its seamless merging of social humanism with modernist sensibility.
The 11 x 14 inch contact print offered in this lot was printed in 1945, one of nine such prints made by Strand in anticipation of his pending retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). Of the remaining 11 x 14 inch contact prints, one is in the collection of MoMA; three at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and another at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York owns the only extant platinum print of this image.
There are about ten 8 x 10 inch prints of this image, which Strand generally used as press prints. The current lot is the only known version that is mounted to another print, On my doorstep (see illustration). Early gelatin silver prints of this image are exceedingly rare at auction, the last one having been offered in 2001.