The White Picket Fence
Paul Strand, 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.
More information
Title of artwork, date
The White Picket Fence, 1976
Date supported
2003
Medium and material
Photogravure
Dimensions
17 x 22 cm

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