Getty Museum

Man with a Hoe, Los Remedios, Mexico

Date

1933

Medium

Platinum print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

After his break with photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) in the spring of 1932, Paul Strand and his first wife Rebecca Salsbury left New York, hoping to settle in the Southwest. Their marriage was dissolving, however, and by the fall Strand departed for Mexico, where he would stay until 1934. Invited there by Carlos Chávez (1899-1978), composer, conductor, and head of the Department of Fine Arts for the Mexican Secretariat of Education, whom he had met previously in Taos, Strand arrived in the country with his marriage to Rebecca over and his friendship with Stieglitz now estranged. It was a definitive moment in the artist's life, one that would mark a shift in his approach. Seeking inspiration in a new environment, one free from the modernizing influences of America, he put his personal losses behind him and focused on his work. His interest in nonindustrialized communities would continue for the next forty years, proving to be a constant theme in his art. Traveling around Mexico, Strand was interested in documenting the life he encountered in the country's numerous small towns. He was also interested in capturing the steadfast qualities of the people. He was searching for those individuals whose lives were marked by struggle, persons who sought to preserve themselves and their customs despite the changing world around them. By moving closer to the subjects and filling his frame with their presence, Strand seems to acknowledge their inherent heroic qualities, as shown in this image and in [_Seated Man, Uruapan del Progreso, Michoacán, Mexico_](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104E72). There is little contextual background in the photographs; the poses, faces, gestures, and costumes are dispassionately recorded against abraded walls, as if to further suggest the hardships the people endure. Strand's Mexican portraits recall the series of Newhaven photographs David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) and Robert Adamson (1821-1848) made between 1843 and 1847 (see [84.XM.966.8](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104AEZ) and [84.XM.966.10](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104AF2)). Strand was familiar with some of their pictures, which were published as photogravures in Camera Work, and in 1931 he had written a review of Heinrich Schwarz's book David Octavius Hill: Master of Photography for the Saturday Review of Literature. While the newness of the photographic medium may have engendered a natural and spontaneous response to Hill and Adamson's camera in 1843, Strand could not be assured of such a pure and genuine reaction almost one hundred years later. He reverted to the working method he had first employed on the streets of New York in 1916, this time utilizing a special mirror lens inside the camera. The result was that his subjects were not aware, for the most part, that they were being photographed, so their appearance is completely candid and unprompted. Adapted from _Paul Strand_, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Anne M. Lyden (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 48, 50. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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