Strand as Mentor Story

From the essay "Strand as Mentor", in the book "Essays On His Life And Work".

Another point about which Strand was adamant: the whole space of the picture must be unified. Members of the class remember a specific instance when he rejected a photograph by Sol Libsohn which did not meet that standard. The top of the photograph was very beautiful and touching, remembers Arthur Leipzing, but someone had created a blur across the bottom. " Libsonhn defended his photograph," said Leipzig, "by saying that moments before or after there would have been no photograph; there was nothing he could do about the person who had walked in front, Strand's answer was, 'we will all take out the crying towels and weep with you and offer our condolences, but when you put a photograph on the wall it either works as a totality or it doesn't and all the excuses, rational, and captions underneath will not make it any better.'"