Book review

Sorry, I just don’t get it.

For some forty years I have been trying to like Strand’s work without success. Frankly, based on the evidence of this Aperture book, his output reeks of stunning mediocrity and, if the prints in this volume are a guide, he was a wretched printer to boot. Ansel Adams, at least, knew how to print.

The sheer pretentiousness of the narrative here, where it is expected that the reader will nod in breathless agreement at the genius of the photographs, is best typified by the way Strand’s street portraits are extolled for his use of a right angle lens to avoid detection. His well known ‘Blind Woman’ is singled out as a prime example of this approach. For heaven’s sake, the woman is BLIND. Why the subterfuge? He could have stuck his plate camera in her face and the result would have been no better, nor the photographer any more detected by the subject.

As for the argument that has it that technical limitations of the time explain the poor quality of the prints (or is it because of one of those hallowed rare metal printing processes where the resulting grime is meant to be admired?) that also fails to pass muster. Julia Margaret Cameron, a technically challenged photographer if ever there was one, was turning out superior work some 50 years earlier.

Pseudo intellectualism at its worst. If you an uncritical admirer of the New York Times, buy this book. Otherwise save your $50.