On Decem­ber 3rd I sug­gested that the image of the day on this blog would mostly be my pho­tog­ra­phy and 3 days later I’m here to tell you that it will be a mix of pho­tog­ra­phy that I per­son­ally find inter­est­ing. Some­times it will be my work but often it will be other people’s and on some days, like today it will be the work of a Master.

Today’s image is by Mas­ter pho­tog­ra­pher Paul Strand and it’s called Young Boy, Gondev­ille, Char­ente, France . I just love the fact that this image is almost 60 years old. It’s a very intense por­trait of a boy star­ing right into the cam­era. What makes this por­trait work for me are the very intense and sharp eyes along with good light­ing that reveals tex­ture in the fence, boy’s hair, face and cloth­ing. The well cho­sen back­ground suits the sub­ject and sug­gests a work­ing envi­ron­ment to me. The print­ing is also won­der­ful with a full range of tones (that show up bet­ter in repro­duc­tions and books ver­sus here on the web).

Young Boy, Gondev­ille, Char­ente, France, 1951 by Paul Strand