Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]
Honesty, no less than intensity of vision, is the prerequisite of a living expression.
[Photography] finds its
raison d’etre, like all media, in a complete uniqueness of means. This is an absolute unqualified objectivity. Unlike the other arts which are really anti-photographic, this objectivity is of the very essence of photography, its contribution and at the same time its limitation... The full potential power of every medium is dependent upon the purity of its use...
The camera machine cannot evade the objects which are in front of it. When the photographer selects this movement, the light, the objects, he must be true to them. If he includes in his space a strip of grass, it must be felt as the living differentiated thing it is and so recorded. It must take its proper but no less important place as a shape and a texture in relationship to the mountain tree or what not, which are included.
The unintelligence of present-day photographers, that is of so-called pictorial photographers, lies in the fact that they have not discovered the basic qualities of their medium.
Material of the artist lies not within himself nor in the fabrications of his imagination, but in the world around him.
The photographer’s problem is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium... This means a real respect for the thing in front of him expressed in terms of chiaroscuro... through a range of almost infinite tonal values which lie beyond the skill of human hand. The fullest realization of this is accomplished without tricks of process or manipulation, through the use of straight photographic methods.
On the whole, I am attracted to those artists who are interested in a large panorama, and not to those who are concerned with their personal likes and dislikes. I am attracted to those who are more interested in everything that exists outside of themselves. That is the final source of all the best in art and it’s a source which has hardly been tapped.
Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. You may see and be affected by other people’s ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will eventually have to free yourself of them. That is what Nietzsche meant when he said, “I have just read Schopenhauer, now I have to get rid of him.” He knew how insidious other people’s ways could be, particularly those which have the forcefulness of profound experience, if you let them get between you and your own vision.
