Paul Strand: The World on My Doorstep

Emigrating to Paris in 1950, American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976) traveled widely with his wife Hazel Kingsbury across France, Italy, Romania and the Hebrides in search of an ideal village embodying an unbroken exchange between people, environment and nature. They also made photographic odysseys to Morocco, Ghana and Egypt. The 113 quietly moving photographs in this magical album capture the particularities of each region yet also speak of the common humanity of the people emphatically portrayed. Duncan, a Paris-based writer/artist who befriended the Strands in France, provides an informal reminiscence. Eskildsen, a German museum director, capably charts Strand's quest for a whole, organic lifestyle and its expression in his peripatetic work, which has received much less critical attention than his early pioneering pictures. (Aug.)