Background
Strand was born on October 16, 1890 in New York City . He was the only child born to parents of Bohemian-Jewish descent.
Strand was born on October 16, 1890 in New York City . He was the only child born to parents of Bohemian-Jewish descent.
In 1907, he enrolled at the Ethical Culture School where he was strongly influenced by one of his teachers, Lewis W. Hine. The class visited Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery and Strand was exposed to the Pictorialist style of photography, including Stieglitz, Steichen, White, Kasebier, Cameron, and painters such as Picasso.
His father gave him his first camera when he was twelve. He was always interested in photography but his visit to Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen‘s Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue with Hine, made him consider his photographing hobby seriously.
Member of Camera Club, Paul Strand started working in an insurance company after his graduation in 1911. Though he became a self-employed commercial photographer in the later that year.
Strand dedicated himself to photography and under the guidance of his mentor Stieglitz; he focused his work on three principles: movement in the city, abstraction and street portrait. In 1916, his early work like Wall Street appeared in Camera Work. Stieglitz praised his early work, as “Strand is without doubt the most important photographer developed in this country since Alvin Langdon Coburn.”
Paul Strand became involved in motion pictures along with photography over the period. In 1921, in collaboration with Charles Sheeler, Strand released his first film, Manhattan, a silent movie about the daily life of New York. In 1936, he produced another motion picture Redes, for Mexican government which was released in U.S. as The Wave.
He worked on other motion films such as, The Plow that Broke the Plain (1936), People of Cumberlands (1937) and Native Land (1942). Strand worked as a committed socialist; he made these significant documentary films highlighting the important social issues.
Strand was the founding member of the Photo League (1936). Initially, this league was set up to provide the photographs of political protests and trade union activities to the radical press. Later, it also focused on capturing working class and local projects.
During his last years, he worked in close collaboration with his third wife, Hazel. In 1949, Strand moved to France spending rest of his life there. Along with motion pictures, he focused and photographed many stills in Orgeval, France.
He spent six decades of his life working as photographer, filmmaker and a social activist. Paul Strand died after long illness on 31 March 1976, at his home in Orgeval, France.
The timing of Strand’s departure to France is coincident with the first libel trial of his friend Alger Hiss, with whom he maintained a correspondence until his death. Although he was never officially a member of the Communist Party, many of Strand’s collaborators were either Party members (James Aldridge; Cesare Zavattini) or were prominent socialist writers and activists (Basil Davidson). Many of his friends were also Communists or were suspected of being so (Member of Parliament D. N. Pritt; film director Joseph Losey; Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid; actor Alex McCrindle). Strand was also closely involved with Frontier Films, one of more than 20 organizations that were identified as "subversive" and "un-American" by the US Attorney General.
Strand also insisted that his books should be printed in Leipzig, East Germany, even if this meant that they were initially prohibited from the American market on account of their Communist provenance. De-classified intelligence files, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and now lodged at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, reveal that Strand’s movements around Europe were closely monitored by the security services.
He was a humanist with wide-ranging sympathies.
Strand married the painter Rebecca Salsbury on January 21, 1922. After divorcing Salsbury, Strand married Virginia Stevens in 1935. They divorced in 1949; he then married Hazel Kingsbury in 1951 and they remained married until his death in 1976.