NYAB Event - Paul Strand "Paul Strand in Mexico"

Paul Strand "Paul Strand in Mexico"

Aperture Gallery

This event has ended.

Paul Strand in Mexico, an exhibition comprised of over a hundred photographic works by Strand, including vintage prints; stills from his classic film, Redes (The Wave; 1936); and previously unseen documents and ephemera related to Strand's time in Mexico. The exhibition, a unique and important photographic portrait of Mexico at a critical point in its history by one of the great modern masters, will open at Aperture Gallery on September 9, 2010, to coincide with the celebrations commemorating the bicentennial of Mexico's Independence (1810) and the centennial of its Revolution (1910).

A satellite exhibition featuring twenty gravure prints from the 1967 edition of The Mexican Portfolio will open simultaneously at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, accompanied by a family program to engage the local community with Strand's photographs.

Strand first visited Mexico in 1932 at the invitation of Carlos Chavez, the eminent Mexican composer and conductor, having developed a fervent commitment to "straight photography"—photographs intended to capture life realistically and objectively, without manipulation. He was eager to put his beliefs into practice in Mexico, then a country undergoing profound cultural and political change. Strand's sojourn in Mexico, during which he not only produced his own work but was also appointed the Director of the Department of Photography and Film by the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education, was a time of great creative renewal for the artist—one of intense productivity, and the development of a method of working that would become the foundation of his subsequent endeavors: collective portraits of other lands. Through his extensive travels through Mexico's rural areas, Strand assembled the startling portraits of rural Mexican men, woman, and children that form the heart of the book and exhibition, along with breathtaking landscapes, baroque churches, and photographs of religious iconography.

Paul Strand (born 1890, New York; died 1976, Orgeval, France) was 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 and Edward Steichen. After World War II, Strand traveled around the world—from New England to Ghana, France to the Outer Hebrides—to photograph, and in the process created a dynamic and significant body of work. During the 1970s, major exhibitions of his work were displayed internationally, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest American photographers.