The Mexican Portfolio, 1932-1933

Paul Strand was an American artist who made significant contributions to the canon of 20th-century photography. Strand’s breadth of skill in the medium are exemplified both in his abstraction of architecture and shadows in Wall Street (1915) and his empathetic documentation of society in Blind (1916). “The decision as to when to photograph, the actual click of the shutter, is partly controlled from the outside, by the flow of life, but it also comes from the mind and the heart of the artist,” Strand said. “The photograph is his vision of the world and expresses, however subtly, his values and convictions.” Born on October 16, 1890 in New York, NY, Strand found his first contact with Modern Art at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery in the early 1900s. After developing an appreciation for photography as an art form, he studied with the renowned photographer Lewis Hine. Over the years that followed, Strand's work transitioned between Pictorialist studies of landscapes influenced by the work of Edward Steichen to sleek images of machinery and buildings. His investigations into the urban world influenced the American painter Charles Sheeler, with whom Stand created the short film Manhatta (1921).