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Famous Photographers - Part 10 - Edward Steichen

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By: buzz-of-the-orient • 7 years ago • 5 comments

Famous Photographers - Part 10 - Edward Steichen

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From Wikipedia:

Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer , painter , and art gallery and museum curator .

Steichen was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz ' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. Together Stieglitz and Steichen opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, which eventually became known as 291 after its address.

His photos of gowns for the magazine Art et Décoration in 1911 are regarded as the first modern fashion photographs ever published. From 1923 to 1938, Steichen was a photographer for the Condé Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair while also working 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. In 1944, he directed the war documentary The Fighting Lady , which won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

From 1947 to 1961, Steichen served as Director of the Department of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art . While at MoMA, he curated and assembled the exhibit The Family of Man , which was seen by nine million people.

From Smithsonian.com:

For the photographers who followed him, Edward Steichen left a creative wake of Mozartean dimensions. There was not much that he didn’t do, and do extraordinarily well. Landscapes, architecture, theater and dance, war photography—all appear in his portfolio.

When photographing landscapes, at least, he often used a "soft focus" technique, and his earlier works are sometimes difficult to tell apart from his paintings . I would have posted more of his war photographs, but, especially on board the USS Lexington aircraft carrier, he commanded a group of photographers, and I have no way of knowing which photographs were actually his and which were taken by others in his group. As the Smithsonian Magazine indicated, his works were eclectic, .

Following are 50 of his photographs:

1. Moonrise, Marmorak, 1903

2. Musician, 1920

3. Venice, Late Afternoon, 1913

4. Solitude, 1906

5. Rodin, Le Penseur, 1905

6. Horse-Chestnut Blossoms, Long Island, 1904

7. Colette, 1935

8. L'Oiseau du Brancasi, 1926

9. Carl Sandberg, Compilation, 1930

10. Laughing Boxes - West 86th Street, 1922

11. Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln, 1935 ( Buzz note: I find it interesting that many famous photographers use Lincoln or something about him as a subject. In my historic photos article, there was a photo of him watching the Union Army, in another Famous Photographers article, there was a photo of his gloves, and now this.)

12. Conrad Veidt, Lupe Velez (1928) ( Buzz note : Conrad Veidt was a fairly famous actor in Germany but left before the war. He played the part of Major Strasse of the Third Reich in the movie "Casablanca".)