Filmwasters
Which Board? => Main Forum => : Jeff Warden February 14, 2015, 08:01:58 PM
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(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6993.jpg)
Back in 2010 The Philadelphia Museum of Art purchased the Aperture Foundation's holdings of Paul Strand's work and added it to their own, making theirs the largest collection of Strand's output, at over 4,000 prints, videos and ephemera. Four years later they have it organized and have produced an excellent retrospective (recently closed) in Philly. The PMA showed about 250 prints and videos, cameras, and some work from Strand's contemporaries too.
The PMA was the only stop in the US for this retrospective, but it will also travel to Switzerland and Spain in 2015 before a final showing in London in 2016.
The show was excellent, including representative images from all phases of his career. There were plenty of big platinum prints and silver gelatin.
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6811.jpg)
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6810.jpg)
Paul's wife traveled with him and kept wonderful notes.
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6815.jpg)
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6796.jpg)
A few displays showed his process particularly well. Pushing a button backlights the negatives.
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6799.jpg)
Strand would make a small glass negative with an Ensign Reflex (this was before the 1920s), and then make glass positives of them. Then he used a photographic enlarger to make larger printing negatives, which he would finally contact platinum print. That's a lot of work!
Below is the resulting print.
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6801.jpg)
And there was gear!
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6819.jpg)
And people!
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6983.jpg)
I was surprised to see how tiny some of his most famous images were printed. I had to keep taking off my glasses and putting my face right up to them.
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6812.jpg)
This was well worthwhile, and I recommend seeing it if you can.
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6817.jpg)
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Beautiful! Thanks Jeff!
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Strand is one of my favorites ever. You are fortunate to have had the opportunity to see this exhibit. Thanks for sharing this.
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Wonderful. Strand is one of the photographers who inspired me to pick up a camera in the early 70's when I saw some of his photos in a magazine (probably UK's Amateur Photographer). I would love to see this exhibition. Thanks so much for posting, Jeff.
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Thanks for the report and thanks for the info.. I think I'll try to make a trip to Winterthur to see the show...
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I'm another Strand fan, so thanks very much for taking the time to post about the show here and to include so many images of the event. Great stuff!
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(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6819.jpg)
...I was surprised to see how tiny some of his most famous images were printed. I had to keep taking off my glasses and putting my face right up to them...
(http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae238/jawarden_photos/paul%20strand/IMG_6812.jpg)
Despite using a number of different camera sizes earlier in his life, Strand's ultimate working method was to make contact prints from negatives produced by the 5x7 Home Portrait Graflex seen at left in your picture. He didn't like 5x7 proportions, preferring a more square nominal 5x6 inches. Rather than simply putting some lines on the Graflex's ground glass to delineate that cropping, he had the camera back modified so it actually blocked light from those approximately 1/2-inch strips on either end of the image!
Although this image, "Mr. Bennett, Vermont, 1944," was sometimes enlarged to sizes between 8x10 and 16x20, you saw a contact print in Strand's initial visualization. Its actual size, after accounting for the fact that "5x7" film is slightly smaller (like all sheet film, compared to named dimensions) and loss around edges due to film holder rails, is right around 4-11/16-inch x 5-7/8-inch.
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Great first post Sal. Thanks for the info and welcome to the forum!
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Thank you for the info, Sal!
Although it is a bit crazy (1300+ km round trip) I think I'll just have to drive there and see the show..
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...Thanks for the info and welcome to the forum!
You're very welcome and thank you for that greeting.
Thank you for the info, Sal!
Although it is a bit crazy (1300+ km round trip) I think I'll just have to drive there and see the show..
You're also welcome, but don't turn your car key just yet. According to this
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/805.html (http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/805.html)
the exhibition ended on January 4! OOPS, I SEE YOU'RE IN EUROPE AND ARE PROBABLY REFERRING TO THE UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS THERE.
I'm 3,000 miles away from Philadelphia, but was fortunate to see a large Strand showing at the Getty in 2005. I grabbed several extra brochures and made small rips in them to record exact sizes of what also looked like rather small prints to me. That triggered my subsequent research.
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Welcome Sal, and thanks for the input! The glass negatives and positives were really something to see.