Street portrait of 1916

Blind, 1916
Paul Strand (American, 1890–1976)
Platinum print; 13 3/8 x 10 1/8 in. (34 x 25.7 cm)
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933 (33.43.334)
© 1997, Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive

"In 1916, Strand made a series of candid street portraits with a handheld camera fitted with a special prismatic lens, which allowed him to point the camera in one direction while taking the photograph at a ninety-degree angle. This seminal image of a street beggar was published in 1917 as a gravure in Stieglitz's magazine Camera Work and immediately became an icon of the new American photography, which integrated the objectivity of social documentation with the boldly simplified forms of modernism."
"Paul Strand: Blind". In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.www.metmuseum.org.