Sources available online now cover all published volumes—including the biblical (through 332 BCE) and early modern to contemporary periods (1500–2005). Sign up here for free access and updates.
Blind Woman
Paul Strand
1916
Image
Please login or register for free access to Posen Library
Born in New York to immigrants from Germany, Paul Strand was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was attracted to photography while studying at the Ethical Culture School under Lewis Hine. After graduation, he participated in Stieglitz’s Camera Club, published in Camera Work, and came to see himself as part of the emergent world of artistic photography. His photographic style characterized humanity in often neglected moments of urban life through street portraits, abstract cityscapes, and movement. Strand also produced films, notably his 1921 adaptation of Walt Whitman’s Mannahatta and his politically charged Frontier Films productions. After World War II he moved to Orgeval, France, and focused exclusively on photography.
Around the time that Paul Strand took this photograph, he wrote an essay on photography that called for developing an original American art “without the outside influence of Paris art schools.” This…
[ . . . ] I have always felt it as a particular honor that a man of such outstanding importance as Theodor Herzl was the first to champion me publicly from his exposed and therefore responsible…
The Hebrew sign in this photograph, from the 1927 municipal election in Tel Aviv in 1927, urges: “Vote gimel” (the Hebrew letter on the ballot representing a particular party or slate of candidates)…