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.
Paul's wife traveled with him and kept wonderful notes.
A few displays showed his process particularly well. Pushing a button backlights the negatives.
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.
And there was gear!
And people!
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.
This was well worthwhile, and I recommend seeing it if you can.
