Born 1890, Manhattan, New York
Died 1976


Strand studied photography under Lewis Hine in New York at the Ethical Culture School (1907–8) and was an active member of the Camera Club of New York (1909–12). Alfred Stieglitz gave him a solo exhibition at his gallery, 291, in 1916 and reproduced his photographs in Camera Work (1916, 1917). During World War I Strand served in the Army Medical Corps (1918–19); after the war he collaborated with Charles Sheeler on the experimental short film Manhatta (1921). This pioneering work, based on a Walt Whitman poem, featured the geometricized architecture of New York and patterned movement. During the 1930s Strand shot newsreels and footage for Hollywood films and briefly worked as a cameraman for the federal Resettlement Administration under Roy Stryker. As president of Frontier Films—an offshoot of Nykino, itself a spin-off of the Film and Photo League—Strand oversaw the production of Native Land (1942), a film about Hollywood's first Red Scare, influenced by Soviet propaganda films of the thirties. Strand formally became a member of the League in 1947, although he had long been affiliated with the group, having served on the advisory board (1936–38) and taught and lectured frequently there over the years. During the fifties, he moved to France and photographed throughout Europe and Africa. His work has appeared in numerous books and he has been the subject of countless exhibitions and critical studies.