Strand gained acclaim in the 1910s for his modernist photographs of New York City, but by the late 1920s he was disenchanted with industrialism and urban commerce. He instead turned his lens onto the natural world, creating careful portraits of driftwood, plants, rocks, and trees concurrent with the abstracted paintings of flowers by his close friend Georgia O’Keeffe.

In 1928, Strand visited sculptor Gaston Lachaise in Georgetown, Maine, where he made this luminous portrait of a wood fern that captures the quiet mystery of New England woods. Strand found nature to be more balanced than the built environment, a feature highlighted here in the symbiotic relationship between the spruce tree and the fern that rises from its roots. The regularity of the intricate fronds is echoed in the needles and leaves that frame the plant, all rendered in the subtle tonal gradations achievable through platinum printing.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)