Getty Museum

New York

Date

1917

Medium

Silver platinum print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

The International Exhibition of Modern Art, held in New York at the 69th Regiment Armory, drew large crowds to its galleries during the run of the show (February 17-March 15, 1913). Paul Strand was among the throngs of people (more than a hundred thousand) who waited in line to see the work of American artists alongside that of Europeans such as Georges Braque (1882-1963), [Paul Cézanne](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103QVS) (1839-1906), and [Pablo Picasso](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/109J7B) (1881-1973). Although at first bemused by the modern art on display, Strand was very much influenced and inspired by the new principles it promoted and began exploring the same ideas in his own photographic work. Taken from a New York rooftop, this bold, angular composition broken down into architectural facets that together create an interesting array of shapes and forms and a play of light and shadow. Abandoning traditional axioms of perspective and representation, he explored the strong diagonals of building rooftops and facades. as an end unto itself. The photograph is amazingly simple in its execution yet strikingly complex in its arrangement. It was a radical departure from Strand's early Pictorialist work. Having seen examples of Strand's prints, Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) offered the young photographer a show in 1916 at 291, as his Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession had come to be known. The opportunity was quite an endorsement, for no photographs had been shown at 291 since 1913, when Stieglitz had displayed his own work there. Stieglitz, who had gradually moved away from the Pictorialist style of the Photo-Secession, in spite of being its major proponent at one time, was now advocating a more direct approach in photography and saw Strand's prints as the embodiment of his own principles. Originally published in _Paul Strand_, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Anne M. Lyden (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 16. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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