Curated by Peter Barberie and Amanda Bock
Not since the 1971 retrospective held at this very museum has a full-blown reevaluation of American photographer and filmmaker Paul Strand been attempted. Now, drawing heavily on a trove of recently acquired prints and lantern slides, the Philadelphia Museum presents Strand not as a revanchist who retreated from modernism after making his radically abstract compositions of 1915–17, but rather as a humanist who believed in the inherent modernity of keen observation and straightforward presentation of the world as it exists. Accompanied by an extensive catalogue, this exhibition of some 250 photographs and three films spans Strand’s career, from his Pictorialist origins and brilliant experiments of the 1910s and ’20s through the extended portraits of places—from Mexico to Ghana—that occupied him from the ’30s through the ’60s. Travels to the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, Mar. 7–May 17, 2015; Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, June 3–Aug. 30, 2015; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Mar. 19–July 3, 2016.
