Getty Museum

Lathe #1, Akeley Machine Shop, New York

Date

1923

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

In 1920, Paul Strand, working with fellow photographer Charles Sheeler ([1883-1965](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/1095NE)) and his Debrie camera, created the film _Manhatta_, inspired in part by "Mannahatta" (1860), a poem by Walt Whitman (1819-1892). The movie, a chronicle of life in New York from dawn to dusk, employed title cards that featured select lines from Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_. The motion picture captured such scenes as crowds of workers rushing to their jobs from the ferry terminals ("When million footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to its pavements"), all set against the often dramatic viewpoints of the monumental structures and new architecture that made up the modern metropolis. Considered the first avant-garde film in America, _Manhatta_ opened on July 24, 1921, at the Rialto Theatre on Broadway, where it ran for a week. Inspired by this filmmaking experience, Strand, with financial help from his wife and an inheritance, purchased his own motion picture camera, an Akeley, in 1922. For the rest of the decade he earned a living shooting news footage and documenting college sports. Strand very much admired the Akeley and made a number of photographs of the inner mechanisms of the camera as well as machinery at the Akeley shop. These pictures speak to an inherent strength and beauty found in the highly polished metal objects. Strand continued to favor a near abstract arrangement for his compositions. Like many artists of the time, he was influenced by the machine age, and the close-up details of the machinery, such as this lathe, exaggerated the size and scale of the objects, automatically making them appear more powerful and impressive. 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), 32. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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