NYAB Event - Paul Strand and Hazel Strand Exhibition

Paul Strand and Hazel Strand Exhibition

Aperture Gallery

[Image: Paul Strand "Hands, Kate Steele, South Uist, Hebrides" (1954)]

This event has ended.

To coincide with the retrospective exhibition Paul Strand: Master of Modern Photography (October 21, 2014–January 4, 2015) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Aperture presents Paul Strand, Hazel Strand. For this exhibition, Anthony Montoya, former longtime director of the Paul Strand Archive, has selected over fifty works by both photographers.

The photographs are a reflection of the couple’s relationship, taken during their travels to France, Italy, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, and Scotland. For each of these sojourns, Hazel began by preparing materials lists, studying and plotting maps, and handling bureaucratic issues. In the field, if she was not making rough sketches and recording pertinent information about the photographs Paul was making, she was engaging and photographing onlookers. Not only did this allow Paul to work without interference, it enabled Hazel to make her own compelling photographs. On occasion, she strategically positioned herself behind or to the side of Paul to document the act of the artist or capture her own interpretation. It is these images that are the inspiration for this exhibition.

Aperture works in partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art—the new home of the Paul Strand Collection—to preserve and promote the legacy of Paul Strand. Under Aperture’s direction, the archive is made available to photographers, scholars, and the public at large. The Paul Strand Archive, which contains the entire life’s work and personal collections of Paul Strand, was originally bequeathed to Aperture Foundation upon the death of his widow Hazel Strand in 1983.