Paul Strand moved to France in 1950, aged 60, largely to escape McCarthyism, which was prevailing in America. He had initially intended to locate what he felt to be the perfect French village or small town, then photograph it in depth, and proceeded to travel and photograph throughout France. However, he didn't manage to settle on any one community, so instead, Strand collaborated with the writer Claude Roy to make a composite portrait of France and the French people using the photographs he made in the hundreds of locations he had visited. La France de Profil follows themes consistent throughout Strand's career: the dignity of ordinary people, their relationship with nature, the necessity of work and labour, and ultimately, their mortality.

In a later essay, Roy wrote, 'Strand did not try to rediscover or renew France's image through the artful tricks and inventions of his craft. He simply tried to penetrate it by descending into the country's taciturn depths with the unhurried docility of a pebble making its inevitable way to the bottom of a well.'

First edition, first impression; 4to (280 x 218 mm, 11 x 8½ in); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure; flexible card boards, publisher's photo-illustrated wrappers affixed to spine as issued, without the glassine, ownership name to front free endpaper, spine a little creased, and with minute loss at the ends; very good indeed; 121, [7]pp (one gatefold).

The Book of 101 Books pp136-137.