Paul Strand: Sixty Years of Photographs

by Calvin Tomkins

Paul Sixty Years of Photographs , a long-unavailable Aperture classic, is one of the most comprehensive surveys of the power and force of a major photographic figure of our time. Before his death in 1976 at age eighty-five, Strand combed his photographic prints and his many books with an eye to the completion of this volume. Seen here is the summation of a lifework, from the first abstract photographs to the series of plant photographs taken in the last years of his life. Also included is a rarely examined series of filmsÛbrilliant, unprecedented documentaries that foreshadowed Italian neo-realism and the new cinema of the post-war years. The re-release of this volume, which features the famous biographical profile by Calvin Tomkins and excerpts from Strand's correspondence, interviews, and other documents, makes one of photography's major artists newly accessible.

Genres: Photography, Art and Photography, Art

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Calvin Tomkins has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1960. He wrote his first fiction piece for the magazine in 1958, and his first fact piece in 1962. His many Profile subjects have included Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Philip Johnson, Julia Child, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leo Castelli, Frank Stella, Carmel Snow, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Frank Gehry, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra, Matthew Barney, and Jasper Johns. He wrote the Art World column from 1980 to 1988. Before joining The New Yorker, he was a general editor of Newsweek, a post he held from 1957 through 1959. In 1955, he joined Newsweek as an associate editor. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including “The Bride and the Bachelors,” “Merchants and Masterpieces,” “Living Well Is the Best Revenge,” “Off the Wall,” “Duchamp: A Biography,” and “Lives of the Artists.” A revised edition of his Duchamp biography came out in 2014.

Reviews

[Owlseyes]

[Tyrone_Slothrop (ex-MB) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visione perfetta, tecnica impeccabile, controllo totale

Una antologia definitiva e completa dell'opera del grande fotografo di New York, considerato precursore del neorealismo italiano e noto da noi per la storica collaborazione con Cesare Zavattini dedicata a Luzzara.

Il libro è di altissima qualità, con testi introduttivi di grande valore e una ottima collezione delle opere migliori di Strand riprodotte nel loro massimo splendore.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Strand.

[Rene Schlegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

For once the heavy text is adequate given the haunted leftist life of this brilliant and consistent photographing pioneer. What I like most is that Strand did not specialize at all, was a photographing alchemist yet delivered a consistently high quality over so many decades. An impressive portrait.

[patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true master.