Paul Strand

platinum print, annotated 'T-25' by Hazel Strand, the photographer's widow, in pencil on the reverse, matted, a typed collection label and a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition label on the reverse, circa 1914

The Paul Strand Archive

Weston Gallery, Carmel, 1981

Private collection

Weston Gallery, Carmel, 1992

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paul Strand Circa 1916, March - May 1998; and traveling thereafter to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June - September 1998

This print:

Maria Morris Hambourg, Paul Strand Circa 1916 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), pl. 12 

Paul Strand, Photographs 1910-1974 (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, and The Weston Gallery, Carmel, 1981), cat. no. 6

Weston Gallery, Catalogue II (Carmel: Weston Gallery, 1982), cat. no. 35

This large, early platinum print has rich, golden tones and a velvety matte surface. It is in generally excellent condition. Deposits of the photographer's original retouching are visible upon extremely close examination. In raking light, a 5-inch faint, diagonal scuff is barely discernible in the central portion of the image. This print is trimmed to the image, and there is insignificant edge wear. On the reverse of the print, there is a mottling of tiny rust-colored deposits, possibly foxing. There is a one-inch linear crease near the right edge that is only visible on the reverse. A thin translucent deposit on the reverse running the width of the upper edge, possibly old adhesive, indicates that this print may have been mounted at one time.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Paul Strand's work from the 1910s is an outstanding example of how American photography became modern in the early years of the 20th century.  The large platinum print of Hudson River Pier offered here, believed to be unique, shows how readily Strand absorbed the visionary aspects of the artistic movements of his day, especially Cubism.

Strand's career as a Pictorialist was relatively brief.  In 1907, as a young man of 17, he was able to visit '291' and De Zayas's Modern Gallery, where progressive art of the time was on display.  In 1913, the year before Hudson River Pier was taken, he saw the paintings of Picasso, Braque, and others at the infamous Armory Show, which, as he recalled it in later years, was transformative.  The year 1913 also marks his personal association with Stieglitz, who saw in Strand's work a path toward photography's future.

The present photograph's calculated shapes of light and dark, the subtle rendering of textures, the arrangement of space into rectangles that approach abstraction, but in a real setting—even the fragments of lettering as a compositional device—all suggest the influence of Cubism.  This 'abstracting' of a real landscape would reach its apotheosis in Strand's work with his White Fence of 1916, and in Sheeler's photographs with such images as The White Barn of the same year.  

According to Strand authority Anthony Montoya, Strand took this photograph with his 3¼-by-4¼-inch English Ensign Reflex camera.  The small glass plate negative was contact printed to another sensitized plate to produce a glass plate positive.  This plate was then enlarged to produce an 11-by-14-inch glass plate negative from which the present contact print was made.   An early collection label that accompanies this photograph indicates that it may have one time belonged to the American art dealer Franklin Riehlman (1953-2014).

The print offered here was included in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Paul Strand, Circa 1916, the definitive exhibition of Strand's work from this pivotal period in his career.