While agreeing with photographers like Stieglitz on the idea that photography was indeed an art form rather than a hand maiden or visual aid to painters, Paul Strand disliked soft focus and other manipulations that were typical of the Pictorialist movement. Instead, he proposed what he called “straight photography.” Strand’s pure and direct style, with a keen eye for geometric patterns and perspective, took photography into its next phase: modernism.
While the aesthetic aspects of Strand’s images are so striking that they cannot escape our attention, Strand was convinced, like Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine before him, that photography could serve as a tool to initiate social change. He believed that maintaining a balance between the rational or objective on one side and the emotional on the other was essential in attaining such goals.
This 1915 picture of Wall Street is a perfect example of this balance. The unadorned building with its austere shapes takes up most of the space. With its repetition of lines and shapes, the image borders on the abstract. The giant rectangular holes do not reveal what goes on behind them; rather, it looks like the small figures could be swallowed up by them at any given moment. People are reduced to subordinate, indistinct puppets, their shadows nothing more than parallel lines in the overall pattern. In all, the image confronts us with the realization of how insignificant the individuals are in comparison to the huge J.P. Morgan Bank, a symbol of capitalism. Thus, while the first impression may be very factual, if we pause and ponder we can discover its implied personal message: a warning against greed and the power of money, and the loss of humanity that this may lead to.
(text: Pauline Dorhout)
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