The White Picket Fence

Paul Strand (1890 - 1976)

National Media Museum

1976

In 2003 the Art Fund gave a grant of £342,000 for the acquisition of the entire collection and archive of the Royal Photographic Society. This work marked a landmark in Strand's career. In this year Alfred Stieglitz held an exhibition of Strand's work at his gallery 291 in New York, which celebrated him as a major new photographer who was 'devoid of trickery and any 'ism'' and 'brutally direct'. Focusing on the banal motif of a garden fence in Port Kent, New York - not quite rhythmic and, in places, somewhat battered - he encourages the viewer to scrutinise it as an object of consequence, and to attempt to gauge the spatial interval between it and the background buildings.

• Medium: photogravure
• Dimensions: 17 x 22cm
• ArtFunded in: 2003
• Vendor: Royal Photographic Society

Provenance

Largely acquired through gifts by members of the Royal Photographic Society.

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