PAUL STRAND 1890-1976 Lathe, Akeley Shop, New Yo

Provenance
The Estate of Paul Strand; Galerie zur Stockeregg, Zürich; to the present Private Collection

Literature
Galerie zur Stockeregg, Paul Strand, Katalog Nr. 5, pl. 21 See also: Greenough, Paul Strand: An American Vision, pl. 60; and Aperture, Paul Strand: Sixty Years of Photographs, pl. 67, for other images from this series

From 1918 to 1919, during the First World War, Paul Strand served as an X-ray technician in the Army Medical Corps, a vastly different vocation from his work experience during his association with Alfred Stieglitz's modern gallery, 291.The war disrupted Stieglitz's circle distinctly. 291, which served as a meeting place, a forum for sharing ideas, news and gossip, as well as being an idiosyncratic commercial outlet, closed in June 1917 and Strand entered the army shortly thereafter. The experience in the corps may have caused him to reevaluate his photographic skills and seek different uses for them. After the war, Strand made his living primarily in filmmaking, as a cameraman on everything from industrial films to Hollywood features. (Greenough, Paul Strand: An American Vision, pp. 38-39).

In 1920, Strand produced his debut film with Charles Sheeler, a mélange of lower Manhattan architectural motifs, shot statically, with each segment framed perfectly and still, forgoing the filmmaker's natural tendency to pan the camera. The film, Manhatta, utilized titles taken from Whitman's poem, Manahatta and was conceived as a seven minute homage to America's cultural avatar. The thesis of the film was to define New York's spirit not through its people but through its structures. Strand later said that he and Sheeler sought to capture "those elements which are expressive of New York, its power and beauty and movement" through "a silent film carried along by the titles which we took from Walt Whitman's poem…" (ibid.)

This was the rise of the Machine Age. Cities modernized as automobiles and streamlined trains, subways, electricity and other products of industrialization became icons defining an era. The first modern and mechanized international conflict had been fought with devastating results to mankind and culture. However, despite the horrors of World War I, the machine became the symbol of advancement, in modern times.

The production of Strand's still photography slowed considerably due to his filmmaking activities so the work from the 1920s can be more easily encapsulated and evaluated. The work offered here, Lathe, Akeley Shop, New York, 1923 is typical of this era for Strand. His friendship with Sheeler, the Precisionist painter and photographer, is reflected in the studies he made in the workshop of the movie camera manufacturer and can be seen as empathetic, metonymic portraits of the artist. Lathe, Akeley Shop and other studies, such as Double Akeley Motion Picture Camera are ultimately selfreferential works, precise renderings of a machine by another.

According to Anthony Montoya of the Paul Strand Archive, this is the only known extant print of this image.