Paul Strand made some of the photographs that taught American designers to see the modern city as shapes. A porch railing throws stripes of shadow across a table. Bowls nest into overlapping circles. A machine part fills the frame until it becomes a pattern of curves and highlights. Later, he turned the same discipline on people and places, from Mexican villages to an Italian farming town. His pictures are a course in cropping, tone and sequence for layout and brand imagery.
His photographs remain in copyright, and none of the Strand prints or photogravures at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art or the Met is flagged public domain, so this guide describes them in words only. For historic images you can study and reuse, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Paul Strand?
Strand was born in New York City in 1890 and died in 1976; the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art all give those dates. According to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s biography, he studied photography with Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture School in New York in 1907–8, joined the Camera Club of New York in 1908 and travelled through Europe in 1911, making softly focused pictures in the pictorial style then in fashion.
The same biography says that from about 1913 he visited the modern art exhibitions at Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession galleries, and that between 1914 and 1917 he dropped pictorialism for work concerned with form, abstraction, movement and candid portraits of people on the street. For the gallerist and photographer who championed him, see our Alfred Stieglitz guide.
Camera Work and the break of 1916–17
Stieglitz showed Strand’s photographs at his gallery “291” in 1916 and gave him much of the last two issues of his journal Camera Work, dated October 1916 and June 1917, according to the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Met’s copy of Camera Work, Nos. 49–50, is dated June 1917. Cleveland’s catalogue quotes Stieglitz’s verdict: “His work is pure. It is direct.” In 1917 Strand set out his own belief in a pure photographic approach, praising the camera’s “range of almost infinite tonal values which lie beyond the skill of the human hand,” as Cleveland’s biography quotes him.
The museums’ records show how fast the change happened. The Met holds Winter, Central Park, New York (1913–14) and From the El (1915). From 1916 come Blind Woman, New York (the Met), the shadow study Porch Shadows (Art Institute of Chicago), and still lifes such as Bowls, Pears and Bowls and Jug and Fruit (the Met). The White Fence (1916) appears in Cleveland’s Camera Work photogravures, and the Met has 1917 prints such as [Wire Wheel] and [Geometric Backyards, New York].
Machines, film and portraits in the 1920s
Cleveland’s biography says Strand served as an X-ray technician in the Army Medical Corps in 1918, then collaborated with the painter and photographer Charles Sheeler on the short film Manhatta, dated 1920 by Cleveland and released in 1921 according to other accounts. Through the 1920s he earned his living mainly as a filmmaker. Our Charles Sheeler guide covers his collaborator’s precise, machine-age style.
The machine entered his still photographs too. The Met holds Akeley Motion Picture Camera (1922), and the Art Institute of Chicago and Cleveland hold Lathe, Akeley Shop, New York (dated about 1922/23 and 1923). Cleveland describes these close-ups as studies of the machine as form, precisely cropped and lit. In the same years he made a series of portraits of Rebecca Strand, held by the Met, Chicago and Cleveland in platinum and palladium prints dated 1921 to 1923.
Places, portfolios and books
From the 1930s Strand worked more and more in series about a place. Cleveland notes he spent summers in Taos, New Mexico, from 1930 to 1932; its Church, Rancho de Taos (1931) shows the adobe church’s rear buttresses as near-abstract blocks. In Mexico he photographed in 1932–33, and the resulting Photographs of Mexico portfolio of photogravures was printed in 1940, according to the Met, and reissued as The Mexican Portfolio in 1967, according to the Art Institute of Chicago.
Cleveland’s biography records a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1945, after which still photography became his main focus again. After visiting France in 1950 he settled there, and for two decades he travelled and photographed in Europe and Africa. Museum records trace the route: Vermont in 1944, Italy’s Po valley in 1953 (Cleveland says he spent five months in the village of Luzzara), South Uist in the Hebrides in 1954, Egypt in 1959, Ghana in 1963, and his garden at Orgeval, France, in the 1950s and 1970s. Many of these pictures appeared in books, and the Art Institute and Cleveland hold his late Portfolio Three and Portfolio Four, printed in 1980.
What to look at in a Paul Strand photograph
Shadow as structure. In Porch Shadows the subject is hard to name; what you see is a set of diagonal stripes and a curved edge. Strand tilted the camera and framed out anything that would explain the scene, so light alone builds the composition.
The crop does the work. In the Akeley pictures and the bowls, the frame cuts through objects at their edges. Shapes press against the borders, which gives the image the tension of a well-built poster.
Lettering in the street. Blind Woman, New York is a close portrait in which the word BLIND, on a sign the woman wears, becomes part of the picture. Words, face and texture share one tight frame.
Long tonal range. Strand’s praise for the camera’s “almost infinite tonal values” shows in his prints: deep blacks, open whites and many grey steps between. His geometry never turns into flat graphics, because the tonal detail keeps the surfaces real.
Frontal people. Cleveland describes The Family, Luzzara (1953) as a mother framed in a dark doorway with five of her sons, set close to the camera and facing it. Strand used symmetry and direct gaze to give ordinary sitters the weight of a formal portrait.
Technique
Museum records describe a wide range of processes. Early work includes gum bichromate over platinum (Chickens, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, 1911, Art Institute of Chicago), the kind of hand-worked print he later rejected. From 1914 he favoured platinum, silver-platinum and palladium prints, papers known for soft, long tonal scales. Later work is mainly gelatin silver. For wider distribution he used photogravure, an ink process: Camera Work reproduced his pictures that way, and so did the Mexico portfolio. Several late prints were made years after the negative, hence museum dates such as “1916, printed 1980”.
His method relied on choice rather than retouching: pick the viewpoint, crop hard in the camera and print for the full scale of tones. That is the idea often called straight photography, which Cleveland’s biography credits him with advocating.
How designers can borrow from Paul Strand
- Shoot shadows, not objects. Photograph the shadows of railings, blinds or plants on a table or wall. Crop until the source disappears and you have a pattern you made yourself. Our guide to geometric pattern design shows how to turn such shapes into repeats.
- Crop against the edge. Let shapes touch and break the frame.
- Keep a full tonal scale. When converting brand photography to black and white, check that you still have true blacks, clean whites and smooth greys between them.
- Make type part of the scene. Photograph real signs, labels and lettered objects in context, as Strand did in Blind Woman, instead of always adding type on top.
- Think in portfolios. Plan photographs as a numbered set about one place or theme, then sequence them. The principles in our poster design principles guide apply to each spread.
- Use the frontal portrait. For team pages and campaigns, try symmetrical, eye-level portraits in the sitter’s own setting.
Treat Strand’s own photographs as study material only.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Paul Strand?
Paul Strand (1890–1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker, born in New York City. He studied with Lewis Hine, was championed by Alfred Stieglitz in Camera Work in 1916–17, made films in the 1920s and 1930s, and from 1950 lived and worked in France, photographing in Europe and Africa.
What is Paul Strand known for?
Sharp, unmanipulated photographs of shadows, still lifes, machines, city streets and people, made from about 1915, and later series about places such as Mexico, Vermont, the Italian village of Luzzara and the Hebrides. Museums including the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art hold his prints.
Are Paul Strand’s photographs in the public domain?
No. None of his prints or photogravures at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art or the Met is flagged public domain, including the Camera Work issues of 1916–17 in those collections. View them in museums and books rather than reusing them.
How can designers use Paul Strand’s ideas?
By photographing shadows as patterns, cropping hard against the edge, keeping a full tonal range, treating real lettering as part of the image and planning pictures as sequenced portfolios. These habits strengthen layouts, campaigns and brand photography.
