Edward Steichen

Edward Steichen, photographed by Fred Holland Day

Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879–March 25, 1973) was an American pioneer in the history of photography and its struggle to be accepted as an art form. During his photographic career he was also renowned as a painter, fashion photographer, curator, writer, and technical innovator.

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. They then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Eduard —as he then spelled his name— at the age of 15 became an apprentice at the American Fine Art Company, a lithographic company. By the time he was 17 he was learning to be a lithographic designer and on the side he was teaching himself painting and photography. His youthful experiments made him one of the first commercial photographers in Milwaukee.

With no classes on photography available and no books in the Milwaukee library he turned to the pages of Camera Notes, a quarterly journal edited by Alfred Stiegletz. In those pages he saw photos and read articles that fed his thirst for more knowledge.

When he was about 18 years old Steichen organized the Milwaukee Art Student's League and served as its first president. He and several friends talked well known area artists like Robert Schade and Richard Lorenz into instructing them and evaluating their work.

In 1899 he entered three of his photographs into the second Philadelphia Photographic Salon competition which was judged by the leading photographers of the day, including Stieglitz and Clarence White. Out of the 962 entries three of Steichen's were chosen for the national exhibition.

In 1900, after having more photos chosen for Chicago exhibit and turning 21, he decided to travel to Europe to study art and he set off for Paris. On his way to Europe he stopped in New York to show his paintings to William Merritt Chase and to meet Stieglitz, the dominant photographer in the New York City art community. Stieglitz ended up buying three of Steichen's prints and agreed to publish some in Camera Notes.

His big breakthrough in Europe came when the Salon Nationale des Beaux-Arts chose one of his paintings, six charcoal portraits, and ten pigment photographs. Photographs had never before been accepted by the Salon. As a result the British photographic art journal Amateur Photographer reproduced all the items accepted by the Salon and he was hailed as the foremost representative of the American School.

While in Europe he became the personal photographer and friend of sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Return to America

In 1902 he returned to the United States and after a short time at home in Milwaukee he headed to New York City. Arriving in New York just in time for Stieglitz's proclamation of Photo-Secession, Steichen became the graphic designer for his new magazine, Camera Work.

He found great success as both a painter and a photographer in New York winning both acclaim and awards, especially of his photo portraits of the city's well known personalities.

In 1903 he married Clara Smith.

In 1905 Stieglitz and Steichen cofounded the 291 and Photo-Secession galleries at the Fifth Avenue space that Steichen had recently vacated. Soon after opening the galleries however, Steichen's constant desire for challenge led him to return to Europe with his family in 1906 while leaving Stieglitz to manage the galleries.

While in Paris he looked up his friend Rodin and soon convinced him that he should do his first American exhibit at his 21 Gallery. He also made the acquaintance of Leo and Gertrude Stein and found himself at the center of the newest art movement in Europe.

As a result "291" became an international force when they also introduced to America the paintings, drawings, and sculpture of such artists as Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Constantin Brancusi. He sent their work to Stieglitz for exhibition at 291 and later arranged to have it shown at the 1913 Armory Show.

Also during this time in Europe he developed an interest in documentary and news photography. He would also happen to be there when the Lumiere autochrome plates were first introduced in Paris.

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

• National Gallery of Art Tour of Steichen Nga.gov. Retrieved September 2, 2007.
• Edward J. Steichen Artcyclopedia.com. Retrieved September 1, 2007.
• Edward Steichen Staleywise.com. Retrieved September 2, 2007.
• Edward Steichen at Whitney Museum of American Art Thecityreview.com.Retrieved September 2, 2007.
• Profile: Edward Steichen Masters-of-photography.com. Retrieved September 1, 2007.

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