A talk with Paul Starnd; France, Summer 1974

Abstract

Abstract Ideas often come from unexpected directions. While I was talking to Paul Strand, I noted him watching his wife Hazel arrange a bouquet of flowers in their home near Orgeval outside Paris. He said to me in mid conversation that he had just arrived at a solution to a problem he had been thinking about for the past few years. He went on to say that beginning over 10 years ago he had made a series of informal portraits of men and women important in French cultural life. How to use these photographs in a meaningful way was a problem, for already there were available a number of picture books of famous personages. Publishers had told him that they felt new photographs of the cultural tlite of France would duplicate much that had already been done. He had also found that publishers who were interested in his pictures wanted to have a say in the selection of people to be included in a book of this kind. Strand indicated he did not want to relinquish control to this degree. The rcsult was that the portrai...