Getty Museum

[New Mexican Desert Landscape with High Clouds]

Date

negative 1930–1932; print later

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Object ID

fd923f25-4586-46e7-b3c1-1ef7973d8ea6

In the 1930s, many artists headed to Taos, New Mexico, at the invitation of Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962), the great patron of the arts who resided in the Southwest. Paul Strand first met her in 1926 and visited the region from 1930 to 1932. Like many of the artists gathered there, Strand was inspired by the vast landscape, which was so different from that of the eastern seaboard. Viewed independently, and collectively, the New Mexico images reflect a major development in Strand's overall approach to photography, in that his previous methods coalesced into one distinct aesthetic ([86.XM.683.7](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106NR5), [86.XM.683.63](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104E71), [86.XM.683.81](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106NT0), [86.XM.683.82.1](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/1096XB), [86.XM.686.1](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104E78), and [88.XM.19](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106F5Q)). In his repetitive photographing of the landscape and architecture, he essentially created a sense of the place, almost like his detailed nature studies from the 1920s ([86.XM.683.97.1](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/1096TS), [86.XM.XM.683.104](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106NTF), [85.XM.200](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106F4K)), only now his vision had expanded partly in response to the vastness of the subject. Adapted from _Paul Strand_, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Anne M. Lyden (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 42, 46. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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