The task is to find and analyse a modernist image.
Image: Paul Strand, Wall Street NYC - 1915
I have chosen to look at Paul Strand's image of a scene in New York, early 1900's, which displays original modernism photography at its best. By this I mean a photography that looks like a photograph. It is a documentation of a an everyday scenery with people walking along Wall Street to an unknown destination, but still there is nothing unreal about this. Paul Strand was an American photographer who focused on street-life documentary and became one of those responsible for establishing photography as an art form along with Alfred Steiglitz.
The image demonstrates the structure and order of Wall Street. Every man or women is dressed smartly in a suit or long coat suggesting they are on their way to or from work in the business capital of New York. Even the shadows of each person, all charging through minding their own business, are in order and straight which suits where this image has been taken. The detail and contrast of the shadows suggest is was a bright, sunny day and perhaps morning or mid afternoon. It would seem that Strand was stood looking down onto Wall Street, very typical of a modernist style photograph, and with the people all walking in the same direction. Their is certainly an abstract influence about this photograph, a common way in which Strand tended to work, with the definition of shapes, lines and figures. There is a distinct similarity between this image and an abstract painting with the detail and repetitiveness of what is happening.
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