Autograph Letter Signed Referring to the Subject of One of His Famous Italian Portraits: “I do happen to have a print of the little girl apprentice with me”

Signed by Paul Strand

$750

Item: 10290

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STRAND, PAUL. (1890-1976). American photographer known for his pure, objective depictions of natural and architectural forms. ALS. (“Paul Strand”). 2/3p. 4to. New York, December 11, 1960. To New York photographer VITO CIOFFERO (?-2006).

“Thanks for your letter just received. I do happen to have a print of the little girl apprentice with me and perhaps something can be worked out. In any event I would be glad to see you. Our time is getting short for our stay here so perhaps you would give me a ring. Cordially…”

By 1915, Strand was already creating the abstract, patterned images for which he is best known. Among his photographs that change the scale of the subjects, are Still Life Pear and Bowls and Typewriter Keys. At the same time, Strand captured New York City’s modernism through abstraction and portraiture, and his post‑World War I photographs of Colorado, Maine, Quebec, and New Mexico reveal a keen awareness of landscape and “the spirit of place,” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Rebecca and Paul Strand

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In 1933, Strand was appointed chief photographer and cinematographer by the Mexican government and, returning home, worked as cameraman on several films, including Pare Lorentz’s 1936 U.S. government‑sponsored documentary, The Plow That Broke the Plains. In 1936, Strand co-founded the Photo League offering the alternative press images of trade unions and political dissidents. Among its members were Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Edward Weston. As McCarthyism swept America, the Photo League was investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, prompting Strand to leave the U.S. and spend his remaining years in Orgeval, France.

In the early 1950s, Strand photographed villagers from the rural Italian town of Luzzara, and in 1955 these images were published in book form as Un paese (A Village). “In Luzzara, Strand relied on Valentino Lusetti for his local contacts and fluency in English, which he had learned as a prisoner of war in America… Un Paese: Portrait of an Italian Village was the first important photography book published in Italy, and remains a landmark of postwar documentary photography. It is also perhaps the most powerful testament to Strand’s belief that photography could portray the lives of ordinary people, their hardships, but also their dignity,” (“I posed for Paul Strand: the day the great photographer walked into my village in Italy,” The Guardian). The photograph discussed in our letter was entitled “Tailor’s Apprentice,” depicting a young girl holding a hat.

Our letter is accompanied by a letter written by Strand’s third wife, photographer Hazel Kingsbury Strand, whom he married in 1951, and in which she discloses the name, Novella Petrolini, and current situation of the girl in the photograph described in Strand’s letter. Also accompanied by a Christmas card with a note in Hazel’s hand, three envelopes in Strand’s hand, all of which bear Strand’s signature, and his handwritten instructions for construction of a picture frame.

Boldly written and signed in Strand’s neat backward leaning hand during a visit to New York. Normal folding and rare.