Paul Strand: Southwest

For Paul Strand, the great pioneer of Modernism, the summers of 1926 and 1930-1932 were a return to experimentation and periods of great artistic growth. He worked in makeshift darkrooms--one in a hotel basement and another above the Taos movie theater. The Southwest period brought not only artistic renewal, but also personal turmoil. His political and social ideas were shifting, and his relationship with the two most important people in his life--his wife Rebecca and his mentor Alfred Stieglitz--were disintegrating. This book reconstructs, in an intimate, visual way, the emotional and creative swirl around Paul Strand, through beautiful reproductions of his images from the period and a comprehensive collection of notes, illustrations and ephemera. While a handful of Strand's Southwest photographs have been previously published, this period of his outstanding career remains largely unexplored. Paul Strand Southwest presents many images for the first time, including dramatic landscapes, decayed ghost towns, the noble architecture of adobe churches and his final austere portraits of Rebecca.