Joel Meyerowitz Reads from "The Gravity of Time" (Video)

After a lifetime of working on a series of “collective portraits” in far-flung places such as Mexico; Ghana; Italy; Tir a’Mhurain, Scotland; and his adoptive country, France, an aging Paul Strand decided to concentrate on still lifes and the stony beauty of his own garden at Orgeval, France, as a site in which to distill his discoveries as a photographer. The work that constitutes Paul Strand’s The Garden at Orgeval (Aperture, 2012) is marked by close and careful study of the forms and patterns within nature. While the images bear the same directness and precise vision that is quintessentially Strand, the work also reflects a growing metaphorical turn.

Here, renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz reads from “The Gravity of Time,” a personal essay included in Paul Strand: The Garden at Orgeval, in which the photographer addresses his first encounters with Strand’s work, returning to nature as an enduring subject, and growing old.

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Aperture published Paul Strand: The Garden at Orgeval in fall 2012.