Akeley Motion Picture Camera is a black and white photograph taken by Paul Strand in 1922. It depicts the innovative motion picture camera that the American photographer bought for $2500 and that allowed him to work in the film industry as a cinematographer until 1931, when the camera became obsolete. Strand took several pictures of the camera and this became one of the most famous. [1]
Strand had worked as co-director with Charles Sheeler in the avant-garde film Manhatta , in 1920. This inspired him to buy his own motion picture camera, with which he would earn much of his living in the 1920s. He took several photographs of the camera, shortly after buying it. This picture depicts the interior film chamber, without the film, shot from upside down, at a 45-degrees angle, and expresses his interest in his functional and rigorous forms and the shine of his highly polished metal surface. [2]
A print of this picture reached the highest price for a Paul Strand photograph when it was sold by $783,750 at Christie's New York on 4 April 2013. [3]
There are prints in several public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, and The Art Institute of Chicago. [4] [5]
Man Ray was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his pioneering photography, and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.
Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' New Deal work uses the large format, 8 × 10-inch (200×250 mm) view camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent".
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. In 1936, he helped found the Photo League, a cooperative of photographers who banded together around a range of common social and creative causes. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
Charles Sheeler was an American artist known for his Precisionist paintings, commercial photography, and the 1921 avant-garde film, Manhatta, which he made in collaboration with Paul Strand. Sheeler is recognized as one of the early adopters of modernism in American art.
Barbara Blondeau (1938–1974) was an American experimental photographer active in the mid-1960s through the early 1970s. In her career as a photographer, she worked in a wide variety of materials, process and formats, although she is best known for her strip prints which she stumbled upon while shooting with a malfunctioning camera.
Race Riot is a 1964 acrylic and silkscreen painting by the American artist Andy Warhol that he executed in 1964. It fetched $62,885,000 at Christie's in New York on 13 May 2014.
The Terminal is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1893. The photograph was taken in New York using the small 4 x 5 camera, which was a more practical instrument to document the city life than the 8 x 10 view camera, who could only work with a tripod.
Spring Showers, the Coach is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1899–1900. The picture was published in the Camera Notes journal in January 1902. Sometimes it is incorrectly presented as being taken in 1902.
Hyères, France is a black and white photograph taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1932. It is one of the photographs from the year when he started taking photography more professionally. He took then many pictures in France and in other countries, like Italy, Spain, Morocco and Mexico, with his portable Leica camera.
Untitled Film Still #48 is a black and white photograph taken by Cindy Sherman in 1979. It is part of her Untitled Film Stills photographic series, taken from 1977 to 1980. This picture is also known as The Hitchhiker.
The Hand of Man is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1902. This is one of the pictures he took concerning urban life and would be published in the first issue of his magazine Camera Work, in January 1903. A note on this issue stated that “The Hand of Man.. is an attempt to treat pictorially a subject which enters so much into our daily lives that we are apt to lose sight of the pictorial possibilities of the commonplace.”
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California is a black and white photograph taken by Ansel Adams, c. 1937. It is part of a series of natural landscapes photographs that Adams took from Inspiration Point, at Yosemite Valley, since the 1930s.
Abstraction, Porch Shadows, also known as Abstraction, Porch Shadows, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, is a black and white photograph taken by Paul Strand in 1916. It is one of the best known photographs of his early phase, and shows the influence of cubism and abstractionism. It is considered one of the first abstract photographs ever made.
The Family, Luzzara, Italy is a black and white photograph by Paul Strand, taken in 1953. It was made during a five-month stay in Luzzara, in the Po River Valley, north Italy, the birthplace of his friend, screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, which was documented in the book Un Paese (1955), illustrated with his photographs and Zavattini's text. Strand's group of photographs depicts the hardships and conditions of the rural Italy at the time and is directly related to the neorealism esthetic, of which Zavattini was an exponent in cinema.
Bowls, also known as Abstraction, Bowls, is a black and white photograph taken by Paul Strand in 1916. The photograph has elements of cubism and abstractionism, and exemplifies his style at the time.
The White Fence, also known as The White Fence, Port Kent, New York, is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Paul Strand, in 1916. The picture was published in the magazine Camera Work, in June 1917, whose editor was Alfred Stieglitz, where it was highly praised by him, specially for its "abstract qualities". It would be later published as part of Paul Strand: Portfolio Three (1976-1977).
The Flatiron is a colored photograph made by Luxembourgish American photographer Edward Steichen. The photograph depicts the recently erected Flatiron Building in New York, taking inspiration from fellow photographers like Alfred Stieglitz, who had just photographed the building a year prior. The original negative was made in 1904 and spawned three platinum-gum exhibition prints in brown (1905), blue-green (1909), and yellow-green-black.
Rodin — The Thinker is a pictorialist photograph made by American photographer Edward Steichen in 1902. It depicts renowned French sculptor Auguste Rodin, in his studio, facing his famous The Thinker sculpture, with his other creation, the Monument to Victor Hugo, as a background.
Gloria Swanson, New York is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Edward Steichen, in 1924. The picture depicts leading silent film actress Gloria Swanson, and it was taken for the Vogue magazine. It became one of the most iconic fashion portraits that Steichen took of Hollywood film actors and actresses, and of Swanson herself.