Edward Steichen

(click to enlarge)
Edward Steichen, 1960. (credit: Joanna T. Steichen)

(born March 27, 1879, Luxembourg — died March 25, 1973, West Redding, Conn., U.S.) Luxembourg-born U.S. photographer. His family immigrated to the U.S. in 1881. His early photographs were influenced by his training as a painter. He frequently used chemicals to achieve prints that resembled soft, fuzzy mezzotints or wash drawings. In 1902 he joined Alfred Stieglitz in forming the Photo-Secession, a group dedicated to promoting photography as a fine art. His style evolved from painterly Impressionism to sharp realism after World War I. His portraits of artists and celebrities from the 1920s and '30s are remarkable evocations of character. At the outbreak of World War II, Steichen was commissioned by the U.S. Navy to organize a department to photograph the war at sea. In 1955 he organized the Family of Man exhibition of 503 photographs (selected from over two million), which was seen by more than nine million people worldwide.

For more information on Edward Jean Steichen, visit Britannica.com.

(b Luxembourg, 27 March 1879; d West Redding, CT, 25 March 1973). American photographer, painter, designer and curator of Luxembourgeois birth. Steichen emigrated to the USA in 1881 and grew up in Hancock, MI, and Milwaukee, WI. His formal schooling ended when he was 15, but he developed an interest in art and photography. He used his self-taught photographic skills in design projects undertaken as an apprentice at a Milwaukee lithography firm. The Pool-evening (1899; New York, MOMA, see 1978 exh. cat., no. 4) reflects his early awareness of the Impressionists, especially Claude Monet, and American Symbolist photographers such as Clarence H. White. While still in Milwaukee, his work came to the attention of White, who provided an introduction to Alfred Stieglitz; Stieglitz was impressed by Steichen's work and bought three of his photographs.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was an American photographer, painter, and museum curator who helped transform photography into an art form. At the turn of the century his photographs were hailed for their artistic quality. In the 1920s he produced a new style of fashion illustration and portraiture for magazines.

Edward Steichen was born in Luxembourg on March 27, 1879. The family settled in Hancock, Michigan, in 1881, where the father worked in a copper mine. Eduard - as he then spelled his name - went to Pio Nono College near Milwaukee in 1888 and showed such talent for drawing that on leaving school he became an apprentice at a Milwaukee lithographing company. In 1895 he bought a camera. Three years later his photographs, which a critic called "ultra expressionistic," were accepted at the Second Philadelphia Salon of Pictorial Photography.

Meanwhile, Steichen had organized the Milwaukee Art Student's League and served as its first president. He decided to study painting in Paris, and on his way there in 1900 he stopped in New York to meet Alfred Stieglitz, who was America's foremost photographer and leader of a movement to gain for photography recognition as a fine art. They became close friends. Steichen was co-founder with Stieglitz of the Photo-Secession, an organization dedicated to photography as a fine art, and its exhibition gallery, called "291." The gallery exhibited photographs and introduced to America paintings, drawings, and sculpture by such modern artists as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Constantin Brancusi. Steichen's photographs were widely exhibited; among the most famous were his portraits of J. P. Morgan and Auguste Rodin.

During World War I Steichen was in command of all aerial photography of the American Expeditionary Force; he retired as lieutenant colonel in 1919 and settled in Voulangis, France. He gave up painting and abandoned the soft-focus and heavily retouched style that had won him fame as a photographer. He used the camera directly, emphasizing sharpness and texture. In 1922 he returned to America and a year later opened a commercial studio in New York, specializing in advertising photography. For Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines he produced fashion illustrations and portraits of outstanding personalities. He closed his studio in 1938 to devote his time to plant breeding. When America entered World War II, he was commissioned lieutenant commander and put in command of all Navy combat photography.

At the age of 68 Steichen was named director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Of the many exhibitions he created, the largest and most famous was "The Family of Man." This exhibition of 503 photographs toured throughout America and overseas. The book of the same title became a best seller. His involvement as a curator helped promote photography to the status of an acknowledged art form. In 1961 Steichen held an exhibition of his own photography at the Museum of Modern Art; a year later he retired to Connecticut. His autobiography, A Life in Photography, appeared in 1963, the same year he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy.

In later life Steichen continued to experiment with new photographic techniques. At his 90th birthday celebration, he said, "When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot … about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself. And that is no mean function. Man is the most complicated thing on earth and also as naive as a tender plant."

He died in Connecticut in 1973.

Further Reading

Steichen's own account was A Life in Photography (1963). Biographies included: Penelope Niven's Steichen: A Biography (Crown, 1997); Patricia Johnston's Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen's Advertising Photography (University of California Press, 1997); and Eric Sandeen's Picturing an Exhibition: The "Family of Man" & 1950s America (University of New Mexico Press, 1995). An old biography is Carl Sandburg, Steichen, the Photographer (1929). A large, representative selection of Steichen's work was New York Museum of Modern Art, Steichen the Photographer (1961), exhibition catalog with text by Sandburg, Alexander Liberman, and Steichen and chronology by Grace M. Mayer.

Steichen, Edward (1879-1973), American photographer, born in Luxembourg, who in 1881 immigrated to the American Midwest. He trained with a Milwaukee firm specializing in commercial lithography; and in 1900-2 and 1906-14 worked in France, where he took portraits, painted Symbolist landscapes, made pictorialist photographs, and supplied Alfred Stieglitz with exhibition ideas for his Gallery 291. He gained an international reputation as an art photographer and became a master printer whose manipulation of the gum bichromate process incorporated painterly brush strokes and subtle layers of colour to produce elegant, romantic studies.

Steichen returned to the USA in 1914. He enlisted in 1917 and eventually, thanks to his administrative skills, headed the Army Air Service's photographic section. After the war he returned to the French village of Voulangis, where he explored the formal and technical problems of modernist photography, a direction already evident in his pre-war work but further energized by the military emphasis on practicality and communication. In 1923 he became chief New York photographer for Condé Nast Publications, and his fashion photographs for Vogue and celebrity portraits for Vanity Fair appeared regularly for the next two decades. Employing carefully controlled studio lighting, Steichen developed an elegant, dramatic signature style that profoundly influenced commercial photography.

He also joined the advertising industry. When he started with the J. Walter Thompson agency in 1923, fewer than 15 per cent of illustrated advertisements employed photography. Within a decade, however, it appeared in nearly 80 per cent of illustrated advertisements in national magazines. This change owed much to Steichen, who showed art directors how photography could be used for both realism and romance and convinced them of the persuasive advantages of mass-market advertising with photography. His approach followed industry strategies. His earliest advertising photographs exploited the descriptive ‘realism’ of photography, probably because art directors clung to ideas about photography as a vehicle of information. But Steichen soon mastered the paradox by which precise detail conveyed suggestions of luxury, sophistication, and wealth. As the Depression worsened, and advertisers required more dramatic and class in which consumption promised social mobility and rewarded women for conformity to traditional roles.

In the Second World War, Steichen commanded the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, which documented aircraft carriers in action. He also organized several popular exhibitions, including Road to Victory and Power in the Pacific, that drew on his commercial experience: he acted as a picture editor, selecting images for human interest and editing through scale and cropping to maximize dramatic power.

In 1947 Steichen succeeded Beaumont Newhall as director of the department of photography at MoMA, New York—controversially, since some at MoMA would have preferred a director who promoted photography solely as a fine art Steichen, however, emphasized the populist. His best-known exhibition, The Family of Man (1955), which aimed to illustrate the ‘essential oneness of mankind throughout the world’, toured internationally for years and sold millions of catalogues. Steichen retired in 1962 and pursued his interest in landscape photography.

— Patricia Johnston

Bibliography

• Steichen, E., A Life in Photography (1963; repr. 1985).
• Johnston, P., Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen's Advertising Photography (1997).
• Niven, P., Steichen: A Biography (1997)

(1879-1973), photographer. Born in Luxembourg, Steichen became America's most celebrated and highest-paid photographer. His career spanned three-quarters of a century and embraced two radically differing styles: impressionism and hard-edged realism. Exploring photography as a fine art, he created a breathtaking gallery of perceptive portraits, landscapes, still lifes, theater scenes, and war pictures. In 1955, while director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, he organized the most widely acclaimed exhibit in the history of photography, The Family of Man.

Steichen was three years old when he immigrated with his parents to Hancock, Michigan. After his father's health failed, the family moved to Milwaukee, where Edward left school at fifteen to become an apprentice in a lithography house. Wielding a four-by-five-inch folding view camera, he photographed pigs and wheat fields to use as models for posters and show cards for local brewers, flour mills, and pork packers. In his free time, he experimented with impressionistic photography, bathing his lens in water or jiggling the tripod as he tripped the shutter to achieve a misty, painterly effect. In 1899 his soft-focus print The Lady in the Doorway attracted national attention at the second Philadelphia Salon exhibition.

While in Paris to study painting and photography, Steichen photographed many European notables including August Rodin. His portrait of the sculptor won first prize in a competition at The Hague. When he returned to New York in 1902, he helped found the Photo-Secession movement dedicated to art photography. At the Photo-Secession Galleries on Fifth Avenue, he arranged the first American exhibitions of modern art by Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso. From 1906 until the beginning of World War I, Steichen lived again in France, painting, photographing, and gardening; he returned to New York two days before an advance patrol of German troops arrived at his farmhouse. After America entered the war, he volunteered for service as a photographic reconnaissance officer with the American Expeditionary Force.

After the war, Steichen became chief photographer for Condé Nast Publications. His slick portraits of such people as Garbo, Gish, Valentino, Dietrich, and Chaplin appeared regularly in Vanity Fair, and his sophisticated fashion photography adorned Vogue. He also did advertising work for the J. Walter Thompson agency. Reportedly, he commanded a six-figure salary, and he charged a thousand dollars for private portraits.

During World War II, Steichen was placed in command of navy combat photography and appointed director of the U.S. Navy Photographic Institute. He supervised the film The Fighting Lady, wrote and illustrated the book The Blue Ghost, and mounted two photo exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. The museum named him director of its photography department in 1947, a position he held until 1962, and it later established the Edward Steichen Photography Center.

Bibliography:

Christopher Phillips, Steichen at War (1981); Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (1963).

Author:

Patricia Condon Johnston

See also Photography.

Quotes:

"There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is man himself. If we hadn't had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn't be here. We have survived it on our optimism."

Edward Steichen
Edward Steichen, photographed by Fred Holland Day
Birth name	Eduard Jean Steichen
Born	March 27, 1879(1879-03-27) Bivange, Luxembourg
Died	March 25, 1973 (aged 93) West Redding, Connecticut
Nationality	American
Field	Painting, Photography

Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973), born in Bivange, Luxembourg, was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. He was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. Steichen also contributed the logo design and a custom typeface to the magazine. In partnership with Steiglitz, Steichen opened the "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession", which was eventually known as 291, after its address. This gallery presented among the first American exhibitions of (among others) Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Constantin Brancusi. Serving in the US Army in World War I (and the US Navy in the Second World War), he commanded significant units contributing to military photography. He was a photographer for the Condé Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair from 1923-1938, and concurrently worked for many advertising agencies including J. Walter Thompson. During these years Steichen was regarded as the best known and highest paid photographer in the world. Steichen directed the war documentary The Fighting Lady, which won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary. After World War II he was Director of the Department of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art until 1962. While at MoMA, in 1955 he curated and assembled the exhibit The Family of Man. The exhibit eventually traveled to sixty-nine countries, was seen by nine million people, and sold two and a half million copies of a companion book. In 1962, Steichen hired John Szarkowski to be his successor at the Museum of Modern Art.

Contents 1 Early Life 2 Partnership with Stieglitz 3 Later Work 4 The Pond-Moonlight 5 Gallery 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

Early Life

His family moved to the United States in 1881 and he became a naturalized citizen in 1900. Having established himself as a fine art painter in the beginning of the 20th century, Steichen assumed the pictorialist approach in photography and proved himself a master of it.

Partnership with Stieglitz

Steichen met Alfred Stieglitz in 1900, on his first trip to New York City from his home in Milwaukee.^[1] In that first meeting, Steiglitz expressed praise for Steichen's background in painting, and also bought three photographic prints of Steichen's.^[2]

In 1902, when Stieglitz was formulating what would become Camera Work, he asked Steichen to design the logo for the magazine, with a custom typeface.^[3]

In 1905, Steichen helped create the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession with Stieglitz. After World War I, during which he commanded the photographic division of the American Expeditionary Forces, he reverted to straight photography, gradually moving into fashion photography. Steichen's 1928 photo of actress Greta Garbo is recognized as one of the definitive portraits of Garbo.

Later Work

The initial publication of Ansel Adams' image Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico was in U.S. Camera Annual 1943, after being selected by Steichen, who was serving as "photo judge" for the publication.^[4] This gave Moonrise an audience before its first formal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944. ^[5]

During World War II, he served as Director of the Naval Photographic Institute. His war documentary The Fighting Lady won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary. After the war, Steichen served until 1962 as the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Among other accomplishments, Steichen is appreciated for creating The Family of Man in 1955, a vast exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art consisting of over 500 photos that depicted life, love and death in 68 countries. Steichen's brother-in-law, Carl Sandburg, wrote a "Prologue" for the exhibition catalog. As had been Steichen's wish, the exhibition was donated to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is now permanently housed in the Luxembourg town of Clervaux. ^[6]

On December 6, 1963, Steichen was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson.

A show of early color photographs by Steichen was held at Mudam Luxembourg from July 14 to September 3, 2007.^[7]

The Pond-Moonlight

Steichen's The Pond-Moonlight

In February 2006, a copy of Steichen's early pictorialist photograph, The Pond-Moonlight (1904), sold for what was then the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction, U.S. $2.9 million. (See List of most expensive photographs).

Steichen took the photograph in Mamaroneck, New York near the home of his friend, art critic Charles Caffin. The photo features a wooded area and pond, with moonlight appearing between the trees and reflecting on the pond. While the print appears to be a color photograph, the first true color photographic process, the autochrome process, was not available until 1907. Steichen created the impression of color by manually applying layers of light-sensitive gums to the paper. In 1904, only a few photographers were using this experimental approach. Only three known versions of the Pond-Moonlight are still in existence and, as a result of the hand-layering of the gums, each is unique. In addition to the auctioned print, the other two versions are held in museum collections. The extraordinary sale price of the print is, in part, attributable to its one-of-a-kind character and to its rarity.^[8]

Gallery

The Flatiron Building in a photograph of 1904, taken by Steichen.

The cover of Camera Work, showing Steichen's design and custom typeface. Also, being Issue 2, the entire volume was devoted to Steichen's photographs.

"Self-portrait", by Edward Steichen. Published in Camera Work No 2, 1903

Portrait of J.P. Morgan, taken in 1903

Notes

1. ^ Niven, Penelope (1997). Steichen: A Biography. New York: Clarkson Potter. ISBN 0-517-59373-4, p. 74
2. ^ Niven (1997), p. 75
3. ^ Roberts, Pam (1997) "Alfred Stieglitz, 291 Gallery and Camera Work," contained in Stieglitz, Alfred (1997) Camera Work: The Complete Illustrations 1903-1917 Köln: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-8072-8, p. 17
4. ^ Alinder, Mary Street (1996). Ansel Adams: a Biography. New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 0-8050-5835-4, p. 192
5. ^ Alinder (1996), p. 193
6. ^ Luxembourg Tourist Office in London - Clervaux
7. ^ Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, v3.0
8. ^ BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Rare photo sets $2.9m sale record

References

• DePietro, Anne Cohen; Goley, Mary Anne (2003). Eduard Steichen: Four Paintings in Context. Hollis Taggart Galleries.

• DePietro, Anne Cohen (1985). The Paintings of Eduard Steichen. Huntington, NY: The Heckscher Museum. LCCN 85-080519 (Exhibition Catalog).

• Mitchell, Emily (2007). The Last Summer of the World. Norton. (A fictional narrative about Steichen.)

• Niven, Penelope (1997). Steichen: A Biography. New York: Clarkson Potter. ISBN 0-517-59373-4.

• Sandeen, Eric J. (1995). Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950's America. University of New Mexico Press.

• Smith, Joel (1999). Edward Steichen: The Early Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

• Steichen, Edward (1955). The Family of Man: The Greatest Photographic Exhibition of All Time. New York: Maco Pub. Co for the Museum of Modern Art.

External links

• Edward J. Steichen Online
• Edward Steichen Photographs
• bloom! Experiments in color photography by Edward Steichen at Mudam
• Edward Steichen at Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain from June 25th, 2008 to September 22nd, 2008
• John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum (a list of the 1963 recipients of the Medal of Freedom)

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