Focus on this artwork and discuss the abstract.
Wall Street is a platinum palladium print photograph by the American photographer Paul Strand taken in 1915.  There are currently only two vintage prints of this photograph with one at the Whitney Museum of American Art (printed posthumously) and the other, along with negatives, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This photograph was included in Paul Strand, circa 1916, an exhibition of photographs that exemplify his push toward modernism.
It depicts a scene of everyday life in Manhattan's Financial District.  Workers are seen walking past the J.P. Morgan & Co. building in New York City on the famous Wall Street, from which the photograph takes its name.  The photograph is famous for its reliance on the sharpness and contrast of the shapes and angles, created by the building and the workers, that lead to its abstraction. This photograph is considered to be one of Strand's most famous works and an example of his change from pictorialism to straight photography.  Strand moved from the posed to portraying the purity of the subjects.  It is one of several images that stand as marks of the turn to modernism in photography.
modernism Manhatta Whitney Museum J.P. Morgan & Co. building Whitney Museum of American Art Manhattan pictorialism Financial District Paul Strand straight photography Philadelphia Museum of Art