Strand, Levitt, and Parks

“PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM MAY DIFFER,” wrote the distinguished curator Felix Hoffman recently, “yet in their imagery and narrative styles, the two media have much in common.” Three American media agnostics whose careers as filmmakers and photographers spanned the course of the 20th century—Paul Strand, Helen Levitt, and Gordon Parks—exemplify the cross-pollination between the two media.

Paul Strand

IN 1921, Paul Strand (1890–1976), already well known as an art photographer, made the short film Manhatta in collaboration with painter Charles Sheeler. The 12-minute film begins with a poem by Walt Whitman that proclaims: “City of the world / (for all races are here) / City of tall facades / of marble and iron, / Proud and passionate city.” Strand captures the spirit of these words by portraying the city with high-angle and graphic shots that convey the monumentality of the skyscrapers.

The film’s cinematography reflects the modernist style of Strand’s photographs. In particular, his iconic photograph Wall Street, made in 1915, could almost be a single frame taken from the movie. In the photograph, pedestrians are reduced to mere shadows by the imposing facade of the J.P. Morgan Building. Crystal-sharp from edge to edge, the photograph reflects Strand’s striving for “absolute, unqualified objectivity.” The film’s “towering geometry” is in much the same style.

After the success of , Strand earned his living from filmmaking for decades, only photographing sporadically. In the early 1930s he was invited by the Mexican government to make a series of films on the people of their land. He welcomed the radical cultural climate that was the legacy of the Mexican revolution of 1910–17, (which means “fishing nets,” though the film was released as in English). Directed by Fred Zinnemann, it was written and photographed mostly by Strand, who wrote in a letter in 1935 that, “not only the photography is mine, but its spirit and conception.”