Rebecca

Paul Strand hesitated for many years before eventually exhibiting the 100 or so portraits he made in the 1920s of his future wife, Rebecca Salsbury. Did he consider them too persona? Strand was a great innovator of photography in America, attaching particular importance to the quality of his self-produced prints. The richness and subtlety of the deep tones in this portrait, together with the tight framing of the face and the brightness of the pupils, accentuate the teeling of intimacy with the model, who stares straight into our eyes, in this photograph that is over a century old.