Apartment Repainted, New York [recto] 1925

This photograph, taken by Paul Strand in New York, shows the simple facade of an apartment building after it has been repainted. The apartment building in this photo feels like a geometric painting. I imagine Strand, like any painter, searching for the essence of form and light. The building's surface almost flattens, reducing architecture to planes and angles. It's as if he’s exploring a visual language, where windows become modular units, and the water tower is reduced to a cylindrical cap. It reminds me of the Precisionist painters like Charles Sheeler, who distilled architectural forms into geometric abstractions. What might it have been like for Strand, wandering the city, looking for these shots? It’s a quiet study of urban geometry, a dialogue between the camera's lens and the painter’s eye.