AUTOPORTRAIT OF STEICHENEdward Steichen was a gifted painter and considered as one of the key figures in the history of photography. As a photographer of great renown in both amateur and professional circles, an editor, curator, horticulturalist, entrepreneur and promoter.
He occupied centre stage as the most famous living photographer and the medium’s first household name in the 20th century timeframe. The illustrious career of Steichen crossed so many genres of photography touching various categories from flower photography, portraiture, nude captures, theatre, landscape, war photography and of course fashion. His early photographs were influenced by his training as a painter such as he frequently used chemicals to achieve prints that resembled soft, fuzzy mezzotints or wash drawings. He was one of the first to bridge the gap between creative photography and editorial, illustrational, and other applied usages of the photography medium.
STEICHEN'S POND-MOONLIGHT
Born Édouard Jean Steichen now known as Edward Steichen from Luxembourg bordered by Belgium, France and Germany in the year March 27, 1879. His family moved to the United States in 1881 and he became neutralized citizen in 1900. At 16, while apprenticed as a lithographer, he taught himself photography and painted in his spare time. His strong sense of design led to studies in painting and photography. Steichen assumed the pictorialist approach in photography and proved him a master of it. In February of 2006, a copy of Steichen's early pictorialist photograph, “The Pond-Moonlight” was considered in one of the short lists of highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction at U.S. $2.9 million. Later in his career, his style evolved from painterly impressionism to sharp realism after World War I.
“Today I am no longer concerned with photography as an art form. I believe it is potentially the best medium for explaining man to himself and to his fellow man” -Steichen
Throughout the 1890s Steichen pursued his artistic ambitions in painting and, in 1895, bought his first camera. Early on Steichen’s career he was more of a painter than a photographer. He studied with some of the great aspiring artist in his lifetime aiming for recognition and approval but through the medium of photography is where he achieved more his vision and acceptance from the public and art world. Steichen, in collaboration with Alfred Steiglitz, helped created 291 gallery, the Photo-Secession and produce material for Camera Work. Between the two world wars Steichen achieved the pinnacle of success in commercial photography. He became the chief photographer for Condé Nast Publications and he began working for the J. Thompson agency creating advertising photographs, by taking some of the most memorable celebrity portraits of Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Paul Robeson and George Gershwin between 1923 and 1938 Steichen was the primary fashion photographer for Vogue and the main celebrity portraitist for Vanity Fair.
Steichen’s home was partly divided into grand majority of living in the North America and in Europe. Some of his historical recorded work was during the two world wars he served with distinction as a military photographer and propagandist, organizing influential and highly innovative exhibitions in support of the war effort. He served as part of the American Photographic Division in France and offered expert guidance in all matters of aerial photography Later he helped chart the course of post-war photography from his position as photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, during the course of which he produced the most widely-seen photography exhibition of all time, The Family of Man, which included the work of 273 photographers from all over the world. Along with it’s widely distributed catalogue
Photography became Steichen’s most recognized and defining career. Even though his first love and passion was painting. But, to completely redefined himself as a full pledge photographer, he later burned all his paintings. He can be considered as an all around artistically gifted, commercial, and technical master in the field of photography. In every profession or trade, there are only a few who make it to the top and become well known. In photography, Edward Steichen is one of them. He was one of the early pioneers that revolutionized the status of photography in the world. Basically, he has been through it all: pictorialism, realism, military, fashion photography, and urban and landscape photography. In his career, he hasn’t only been a photographer but also a painter, a gallery director, a museum curator, graphic artist, talent scout, administrator, an activist and a propagandist.
Edward Steichen died on March 25, 1973 in West Redding, Connecticut.
“I don't know any form of art that isn't or hasn't been commercial” -Steichen
REFERENCES
www.rleggat.com/photohistory/
www.answers.com/topic/edward-steichen
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAPsteichen.htm
www.bookrags.com/biography/edward-steichen/
www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artists_detail.asp?gid=173989&aid=668179
www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/In-Vogue.html
www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Edward_Steichen.aspx
www.staleywise.com/collection/steichen/steichen.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Steichen
www.profotos.com/education/referencedesk/masters/masters/edwardsteichen/edwardsteichen.shtml
topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/s/edward_steichen/index.html
Ewing, William A., Edward Steichen, Photo Poche, 1993,
Ewing, William A. and Todd Brandow, Edward Steichen in High Fashion--The Condé Nast Years 1923-1937, FEP Editions LLC, Minneapolis, MN, 2008, 288 pages.
Steichen: une épopée photographique, Éditions Thames & Hudson SARL, Paris, France, 2007, 336 pages.
