PAUL STRAND

Speckled Toadstool, Georgetown, Maine

Details

PAUL STRAND
Speckled Toadstool, Georgetown, Maine
Varnished platinum print. 1928. Signed, titled and dated 1928 in ink on the verso.
9 x 7.5/8in. (24.8 x 19.4cm.)
Accompanied by a signed letter of authentication from the artist stating: This letter shall verify that the recent print you purchased from LIGHT in May 1973, titled "Speckled Toadstool, Georgetown, Maine, 1927" is a vintage platinum print on Platinotype japine paper, printed by me in either 1927 or 1928. It is a unique print, being the only one I remember making from that negative to date.

Provenance

With LIGHT Gallery, New York;
Private collector;
to the present owner.

Lot Essay

"One of the most beautiful and influential parts of Strand's heroic oeuvre is the series of closeup nature studies that he began in the early twenties. These pictures are not merely descriptions of particular botanical or geological forms; they are, rather, miniature landscapes, organized with the same rigor and described with the same sensitivity to light and space that Strand would have accorded a grand vista. When the great wild continent had been finally conquered, Strand rediscovered the rhythms of the wilderness in microcosm." (Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs, p. 96.)

This is a unique print.