Paul Strand

Paul Strand, born Nathaniel Paul Stransky in New York on October 16, 1890, was an American photographer and filmmaker. His parents, Jacob and Matilda Stransky, were Czech immigrants; his father gave him a camera when he was twelve. Strand studied under documentary photographer Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. On a class field trip, he visited Stieglitz and Steichen’s 291 gallery, where modernist photography and painting inspired him to take his hobby seriously. Stieglitz later featured Strand’s work at the gallery, in his magazine *Camera Work*, and in his studio. Early pieces like *Wall Street* experimented with formal abstraction, influencing painters such as Edward Hopper. Other works showed Strand’s interest in social reform through photography. For portraits, he sometimes mounted a fake brass lens on his camera while using a real hidden lens, so subjects didn’t know they were being photographed—a technique that drew criticism.

In 1936, Strand helped found the Photo League, a cooperative of photographers focused on social and political causes. He and Elizabeth McCausland were especially active; Strand served as an elder statesman. Both were left-leaning, and Strand was more than sympathetic to Marxist ideas. Along with Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, they contributed to the League’s publication *Photo News*.

Strand also worked in film. His first movie, *Manhatta* (1921), made with Charles Sheeler, was a silent depiction of New York City life that included a shot similar to his *Wall Street* photograph. From 1932 to 1935, he lived in Mexico, making *Redes* (released in the US as *The Wave*) for the Mexican government. He also worked on the documentary *The Plow That Broke the Plains* (1936) and the pro-union, anti-fascist *Native Land* (1942). Between 1933 and 1952, Strand had no darkroom of his own and used others’.

In December 1947, the Photo League was listed as a subversive organization by the US Attorney General. In 1948, Strand contributed a photo of television antennas over New York for a CBS ad. On January 17, 1949, he signed a petition supporting Communist Party leaders on trial under the Smith Act, alongside figures like W. E. B. Du Bois, Howard Fast, and Albert Maltz.

In June 1949, Strand left the US to screen *Native Land* at the Karlovy Vary film festival in Czechoslovakia. He spent his remaining 27 years in Orgeval, France, never learning the language but maintaining a creative life with his third wife, photographer Hazel Kingsbury Strand. Though best known for early abstractions, his later still photography produced six book-length “portraits” of places: *Time in New England* (1950), *La France de Profil* (1952), *Un Paese* (on Luzzara and the Po River Valley, 1955), *Tir a’Mhurain / Outer Hebrides* (1962), *Living Egypt* (1969, with James Aldridge), and *Ghana: An African Portrait* (1976, with Basil Davidson).

Strand married painter Rebecca Salsbury in 1922, photographing her often in intimate, closely cropped compositions. They divorced in 1933. He married Virginia Stevens in 1936, divorcing in 1950. He married Hazel Kingsbury in 1951, remaining with her until his death in 1976. His departure for France coincided with the first libel trial of his friend Alger Hiss, with whom he corresponded until his death. Strand never officially joined the Communist Party, but many collaborators—like James Aldridge and Cesare Zavattini—were members, and many friends were Communists or suspected of being so, including MP D. N. Pritt, director Joseph Losey, poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and actor Alex McCrindle.