In my recent U3A Cambridge courses on photography I’ve shown how photography and painting depict similar relationships in work created centuries apart. Examples are: Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936 and Raphael, Madonna of the Pinks, 1507; and W Eugene Smith, Tomoko and Mother in the Bath, 1972 and Giovanni Bellini, Pieta, 1505. I don’t know if there is any evidence whether the two photographers were influenced by their awareness of such paintings. Another example has emerged from the Reading Photographs class on Monday and the Arts Forum on Wednesday: Paul Strand, Blind, 1916 and Pablo Picasso, Celestina, 1903. The dates here are close together and Strand might have been aware of the painting.
