Paul Strand 1890-1976

The Paul Strand Estate

Light Gallery, New York, 1970s

Private collection, New York, 1980

Paul Strand: Rebecca (Robert Miller Gallery, 1996), pl. 13 (this print)

British Journal of Photography, 5 October 1923

This print, purchased from Light Gallery, New York, in 1980, is believed to be unique.  Light Gallery held its first exhibition of Strand's work in 1972, the gallery's third show since its inception in 1971.  Strand's work was subsequently featured at the gallery in a joint exhibition with Emmett Gowin in 1976, and in a posthumous one-man exhibition in 1977.  After the photographer's death, Light Gallery received prints directly from the photographer's estate.  

Strand began his series of portraits of Rebecca Salsbury in 1920 and continued until 1932, the year before their marriage ended, producing over 100 negatives.  Working primarily with an 8 by 10-inch view camera and a 4 by 5-inch Graflex, Strand photographed Rebecca close up and without props, and contact-printed his best images in rich, somber platinum and palladium metals. 

Belinda Rathbone has noted that this series stands out in the context of Strand's work, for it is the one area where his customary objectivity gives way to a more personal approach.  'Compared with his earlier abstract exercises,' she writes, 'these portraits of Rebecca seem effortlessly arranged; most important, they succeed in coalescing completely his art and his intimate life. . . Never again would Strand use his art to explore the facets of an intimate relationship' (Essays, pp. 81-86).