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| Photo By Paul Strand |
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Paul Strand's "Rebecca" is currently on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
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What stirs an artist more strongly: internal or external inspiration? Sometimes it's an equal pull. When investigating the 35 photographs in
Paul Strand Southwest at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM), consider that factor.
"Strand's Southwest period stands out ... as a transitional period in his life," says Dennis Kiel, associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the CAM. "His political and social ideas were shifting, and his relationships with the two most important people in his life -- his wife Rebecca and his mentor, photographer Alfred Stieglitz -- were disintegrating."
In constant pursuit of the new, Strand's photographs vividly explore the crossover of realism into abstraction, and champion straight (un-manipulated) photography. Although they echo formalism and structure, American romanticism (think old westerns) drifts quietly through these photographs.
What lies beneath? Enter the love triangle: Stieglitz, mentor to both painter Georgia O'Keeffe and Strand in New York, sent Strand West to work -- and to determine what O'Keeffe's feelings might be for him. Despite Strand and O'Keeffe's strong intellectual and physical attraction, O'Keeffe eventually married Stieglitz. And Strand married Rebecca, who held a striking resemblance to O'Keeffe. Observe: three strong-willed, over-worked artists and one secretary wife paying the bills. Can this end well?
This exhibition highlights three bodies of work: Southwestern landscapes, ghost towns and Rebecca. In the landscapes, the sky is brooding and dark, pale and indiscernible or both, manifesting contradictory feelings of chaos and stillness. The ghost towns represent an end, certainly a feeling of emptiness. The portraits of Rebecca capture a distance in her body and eyes that foreshadow the divorce that inevitably followed. Slightly disappointing are the small photo sizes, which minimize some spectacular landscapes.
Paul Strand Southwest provides a life narrative, as Strand probes land, sky, architecture, religion and his soon-to-be ex-wife in a search for subject -- and himself. Grade: B
Paul Strand Southwest is on view at CAM through Aug. 20.
