Edward Steichen: A Busy Man
“Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper. The photographer begins with the finished product”
– Edward Steichen
Edward Steichen was an American photographer, painter, art gallery and museum curator, and even a film director. It would be safe to assert that he was a very well rounded man.
Similarly, his photographic styles evolved through the vast stages of his life. Born on March 27, 1879 at Luxembourg, Steichen’s family moved to the United States in 1881. Having established himself as a painter early on in his life, Steichen moved onto photography in 1895, where he assumed the pictorialist approach and proved himself a master of it. These early photos emulated the characteristics of paintings and etchings with the use of black and white or sepia-toned hues, soft special filters and lens coatings, exotic printing, and rough-surface printing papers. Some examples of his more famous pictorialist-style photos include the “Pond-Moonlight” and the “Flat Iron.”
After World War I, during which he commanded the photographic division of the American Expeditionary Forces, he made a complete ‘u-turn’ in his photographic style, moving from Pictorialism to Straight Photography. He took shots of bridges and buildings, trying to depict them as realistically and objectively as possible. He would eventually venture into fashion photography, and his 1938 photo of actress Greta Garbo, featured in Life Magazine, shows that he was a leading figure in the fashion photography industry. During World War II, he served as Director of the Naval Photographic Institute. He shot a war documentary called “The Fighting Lady,” which won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary. Among his vast repertoire of accomplishments, he served as the Director of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and was credited with creating “The Family of Man” in 1955, a vast exhibition consisting of over 500 photos that depicted life, love and death in 68 countries.
