Paul Strand

After nearly a lifetime of traveling and photographing in far-flung places such as Mexico, Ghana, Italy, Scotland and his adoptive country, France, Paul Strand began to concentrate on the stony beauty of his own garden at Orgeval. The work that constitutes The Garden at Orgeval offers a close, exacting study of nature's forms and patterns: tiny button-shaped flowers, cascading winter branches and snarls of twigs. While these photographs exhibit the same directness and precise vision that is so quintessentially Strand, they also reflect his increasing preoccupation with mortality and the fragility of existence. The photographs in this volume have been selected by the renowned photographer, Joel Meyerowitz--whose own affinity toward the Orgeval series stems from a lifetime of photographing in different genres and ultimately, like Strand, returning to nature as an enduring subject. Meyerowitz also contributes an essay responding to Strand's images and reflecting on the contemplation of gardens and the process of aging.

"Pioneering, modernist photographer Paul Strand made Southwest images of formal, evocative beauty during the turbulent years 1930 to 1932, a time of significant change in his personal, artistic, and political life. This book reproduces fifty, newly edited photographs - both classic and previously unpublished - in a fresh portrait of this distinctive American region. Following the portfolio, Paul Strand Southwest assembles a narrative montage of art, writing, personal letters, snapshots and artifacts that reveal the character of northern New Mexico while linking Strand to important cultural figures in both New York and Taos circles of influence."--BOOK JACKET

"In 1954 Paul Strand and his wife Hazel spent three months traversing the rugged island of South Uist, off the west coast of Scotland. Tir a'Mhurain is a collection of photographs that reflects the impressions they gathered during their stay. Juxtaposing people and landscape, Strand's beautifully sequenced photographs depict the perfect complicity he saw between nature and habitation in this wild terrain. Whether it is a view of the rocks and the sea or a grinning shepherd boy; scudding clouds hanging over seaside houses or the wrinkled face of an old lady framed by a knitted shawl, Strand's images transcend the ephemeral. This extended portrait captures the essence and complexity of a singular place."--BOOK JACKET.