Rock, Port Lorne, Nova Scotia

This is the earliest of Strand’s many photographs of rock formations and arguably the most arresting. He brought his finest tools to bear on this formalist exploration: a newly acquired 8 x 10–inch view camera for the negative, and the luxurious platinum process for the print. Form, texture, tone, and material resolve into a statement on the sensuality of things. For Strand, the critic Clive Bell’s theory of significant form—“lines and colors combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, [that] stir our aesthetic emotions”—was an invitation to probe photography’s revelatory power. A rock becomes an object of almost mystical beauty. (“Celebrating Reunion at the Johnson,” text by Kate Addleman-Frankel and presented at the Johnson Museum May 25-July 28, 2019)