.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In a letter of 1973 Strand confirmed that this photograph is unique: 'This letter serves to verify that the recent print you purchased from Light [Gallery] 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.'
'The work of Paul Strand has become a legend. Rarely exhibited, its influence has nevertheless spread.... Time and again photographers coming in brief contact with its force and its extraordinary beauty have felt the shock of a catalyst... In Maine, 1927-28, he made a series of intense close-ups that have been called the essentials of poetry. In these photographs he rises to his full stature: the velocity of line developed in slanting grasses, curling ferns, vivid spear thrusts of young iris; the rising counterpart of dark forest, etched across with dead lichened branches... Beginning with this series, Strand's prints attain a depth and richness that Elizabeth McCausland, the most comprehensive of his commentators, called 'superlative purity pushed beyond logic into passion.' ... He seldom had time to make more than one superb print. Those on platinum paper, now unobtainable, are truly unique... In the past thirty years his work has been called brutal, cruel, tender, selfless, precious, static, timeless, tumultuous, wonderfully alive. The final verdict, as with all artists, rests with the future.' (Newhall, Paul Strand: Photographs, 1915-1945, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1945.
'The work of Paul Strand has become a legend. Rarely exhibited, its influence has nevertheless spread.... Time and again photographers coming in brief contact with its force and its extraordinary beauty have felt the shock of a catalyst... In Maine, 1927-28, he made a series of intense close-ups that have been called the essentials of poetry. In these photographs he rises to his full stature: the velocity of line developed in slanting grasses, curling ferns, vivid spear thrusts of young iris; the rising counterpart of dark forest, etched across with dead lichened branches... Beginning with this series, Strand's prints attain a depth and richness that Elizabeth McCausland, the most comprehensive of his commentators, called 'superlative purity pushed beyond logic into passion.' ... He seldom had time to make more than one superb print. Those on platinum paper, now unobtainable, are truly unique... In the past thirty years his work has been called brutal, cruel, tender, selfless, precious, static, timeless, tumultuous, wonderfully alive. The final verdict, as with all artists, rests with the future.' (Newhall, Paul Strand: Photographs, 1915-1945, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1945.