Edward Steichen

Edward Steichen, photographed by Fred Holland Day

Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879–March 25, 1973) was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator, born in Bivange, Luxembourg. 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. In 1905, Steichen helped create the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession with Alfred 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.

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.

In 1963 he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy.

Early Life

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 have photography recognized as a fine art. They became close friends and confounded the 291 and Photo-Secession galleries. At "291" they introduced to America paintings, drawings, and sculpture by such modern artists as Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Constantin Brancusi.

War years

J.P. Morgan, photographed by Edward Steichen in 1903

During World War I Steichen was placed 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 personalities like J. P. Morgan and Auguste Rodin. Employing carefully controlled studio lighting, Steichen developed an elegant, dramatic signature style that profoundly influenced commercial photography.

Photo taken by Commander Edward Steichen on the U.S.S. Lexington in 1943

He closed his studio in 1938 to devote his time to plant breeding. Back in Paris, Steichen made botanical experiments, a lifelong passion; he was later to win added renown as a crossbreeder of flowers.

When America entered World War II, he was commissioned lieutenant commander and headed 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. His war documentary The Fighting Lady, chronicling the battles of the crew of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Yorktown, won the 1944 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Family of Man

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," that was first shown in 1955.

According to Steichen, the exhibition represented the 'culmination of his career'. The 503 photos were selected from almost two million pictures taken by 273 photographers, famous and unknown, in 68 countries, and offered a striking snapshot of the human experience. Subjects included birth, love, and joy, war, privation, illness and death. His intention was to prove visually the universality of human experience and photography's role in its documentation.

The exhibit was turned into a book of the same name, containing an introduction by Carl Sandburg who was Steichen's brother-in-law. The book was reproduced in a variety of formats (most popularly a pocket-sized volume) in the 1950s, and reprinted in large format for its 40th anniversary. It has sold more than 4 million copies.

The exhibition later traveled in several versions to 38 countries. More than 9 million people viewed the exhibit. The only surviving edition was presented to Luxembourg at Steichen's request and is on permanent display in Clervaux.

Legacy

Steichen's The Pond-Moonlight

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

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, 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.

Works

• Steichen, Edward. 1963. A Life in Photography. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
• Steichen, Edward. 1978. Edward Steichen. The Aperture history of photography series, 9. Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture. ISBN 0893810061
• Steichen, Edward. 1966. Sandburg; photographers view Carl Sandburg. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
• Steichen, Edward. 1951. Memorable Life Photographs. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Further reading

• Niven, Penelope. 1997. Steichen: a biography. New York: Clarkson Potter. ISBN 0517593734
• Steichen, Edward, and Joanna T. Steichen. 2000. Steichen's legacy: photographs, 1895-1973. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0679450769
• Steichen, Edward, Beaumont Newhall, and Mary Steichen Calderone. 1981. Edward Steichen, the early years, 1900-1927. Millerton, N.Y.: Apeture. ISBN 0893810746
• Smith, Joel, and Edward Steichen. 1999. Edward Steichen: the early years. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0691048738
• Steichen, Edward, and Christopher Phillips. 1981. Steichen at War. New York: H.N. Abrams. ISBN 0810916398
• Johnston, Patricia A. 1997. Real fantasies Edward Steichen's advertising photography. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press. ISBN 0585277877
• Peterson, Christian A., and Edward Steichen. 1984. Edward Steichen: the portraits. San Francisco, Calif: Art Museum Association of America. ISBN 0930295005
• Steichen, Edward, and Dennis Longwell. 1978. Steichen: the master prints 1895-1914, the symbolist period. New York: Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0870705814
• Sandeen, Eric J. 1995. Picturing an exhibition: the family of man and 1950s America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0826315585

External links

• Edward J. Steichen Artcyclopedia.com. Retrieved September 1, 2007.
• Edward Steichen Photographs
• bloom! Experiments in color photography by Edward Steichen at Mudam
• Profile: Edward Steichen Masters-of-photography.com. Retrieved September 1, 2007.

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