Paul Strand In Mexico

"Paul Strand in Mexico" tells the story of the photographer's journeys through Mexico in the early 1930s. In search of a fresh start, Strand traveled to Mexico City in late 1932 at the invitation of Carlos Chavez, the eminent Mexican composer and conductor. The work he created during this key period reflects a time of intense productivity, creative renewal, and the evolution of Strand's foundational idea of the "collective portrait," in which he depicted a region through photographs of individuals, still lifes and studies of architecture and religious subjects. The first publication to chronicle this pivotal time in Strand's career (1932-34), "Paul Strand in Mexico "demonstrates how, through his photographic studies and work in film, Strand deepened his involvement with Mexican art, society, and revolutionary politics. Shedding new light on this little-known chapter of Strand's life, a scholarly analysis by James Krippner (Associate Professor of History at Haverford College, Pennsylvania) brings together primary research from distinguished archives and institutions in both Mexico and the United States, and Mexican photo-historian Alfonso Morales contributes an essay contextualizing this remarkable body of work within the canon of Mexican photography and film of the 1930s. Additionally, the appendix serves as the catalogue raisonne of Strand's entire photographic output in Mexico. The culmination of Strand's time in Mexico was his collaboration with Emilio Gomez Muriel and Academy Award-winning director Fred Zinnemann on the groundbreaking film, "Redes" ("The Wave") (1936). A remastered DVD version of the film is included with this essential volume. Paul Strand (1890-1976) is one of the great photographers of the twentieth century. As a youth, he studied under Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, going on to draw acclaim from such illustrious sources as Alfred Stieglitz. After World War II, Strand traveled around the world--from New England to Ghana to France to the Outer Hebrides--to photograph, and in the process created a dynamic and significant body of work.

Photographs of Mexico, a portfolio of twenty hand-pulled dust grain gravure prints by Paul Strand, has long been unavailable. A second edition was published as the Mexican Portfolio in 1967. Six hand-pulled photogravures from this portfolio are now available in a new edition of 350 prints & 35 artist's proofs bearing the seal of the Paul Strand Archive.

For more than 15 years, French photographer Bernard Plossu took extended trips to Mexico to photograph people, landscapes and a culture in flux. " Vámanos! Bernard Plossu in México" captures the bohemian adventures of this traveler's four journeys, the first in 1965-66 and the last in 1981. His black-and-white and color images have transfixed generations of young people in France, who cherish him in the way young Americans celebrate Jack Kerouac. Plossu's romantic vision encompasses coquettish women, peasants at work, fog-wrapped trails in the jungle and waves lapping at sandy beaches. Yet Plossu is also aware of poverty and the challenges facing a modernizing society, and his photographs capture the nobility of all his subjects. Containing more than 300 photographs and organized into chapters representing each of his Mexican journeys, this is the first compilation of Plossu's Mexican work.

"Now this publication is available in English as Mexican Suite. Olivier Debroise and Stella de Sa Rego have revised this edition to include more current material and explanatory notes for an audience less familiar with Mexican history. They have also eliminated some of the general history of photography and added more of the early history of photography in Mexico, as well as many new, previously unpublished images. The book is organized both chronologically and thematically, which allows viewer/readers to follow the evolution of major photographic genres and styles. Debroise also examines the role of photography in the development of modern Mexico and the influence of prominent foreign photographers such as Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

T&HFL12 After a lifetime of working on a series of "collective portraits" in far-flung places such as Mexico; Ghana; Italy; Tir a'Mhurain, Scotland; and his adoptive country, France, an aging Paul Strand decided to concentrate on still lifes and the stony beauty of his own garden at Orgeval, France, as a site in which to distill his discoveries as a photographer. The work that constitutes The Garden at Orgeval is marked by close and careful study of the forms and patterns within nature--of tiny buttonshaped flowers, cascading winter branches, and fierce snarls of twigs. While the images bear the same directness and precise vision that is quintessentially Strand, the work also reflects a growing metaphorical turn. Renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz--whose own affinity toward Strand's Orgeval series stems from a lifetime of photographing in different genres and ultimately returning to nature as an enduring subject--will select the photographs in the book, and respond to them in an accompanying personal essay, reflecting on issues, including the contemplation of one's garden and growing old. Beautifully produced in a modest size, in the manner of a volume of poems, this book's task is to do credit to Strand's final work, both as an individual and as a key figure in Modernist photography.

The Southwest period brought not only artistic renewal, but also personal turmoil. This book reconstructs, in an intimate, visual way, the emotional and creative swirl around Paul Strand.

Interviews with villagers and descriptions of daily life accompany photographs of the people and town of Luzzara.