MANHATTA – PAUL STRAND & CHARLES SHEELER

The 1926 avant-garde movie.

From “ The American ” website
One of the great ironies of Sheeler’s career—and a lingering, unresolved question—is the diminished role of photography in the artist’s work after 1929, especially in light of the extraordinary level of accomplishment represented by the River Rouge series. In the early 1930s, Sheeler came to recognize what photography could do for his painting; but many critics found works like “Classic Landscape” to be oppressively…photographic. Indeed, Sheeler’s business arrangement with Edith Halpert, his new dealer in the 1930s, required him to keep photography in the background, to prevent his paintings from being found overly dependent on the “machine.”