The earliest critical assessment of the work of American photographer Edward Steichen (1879-1973) appeared in the magazine Camera Notes in 1899: “Here is a worker with a soul full of feeling, a thoughtful mind, and skilled hand. His future is sure to be most interesting.”
It was the first accolade in a career that would span seven decades, during which Steichen explored all genres and experimented with countless photographic processes. At the height of his professional trajectory, he was made director of the department of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This post, which he occupied for 15 years, made him the most influential person in the world of photographic art.
The New Yorker called Steichen “the Rembrandt of photography”. His mentor and collaborator, Alfred Stieglitz, hailed him as “the greatest photographer that ever lived”. But for every champion of his work, there were fierce detractors. Documentary photographer Walker Evans called him a peddler of “parvenu elegance” whose commercial images revealed a “spiritual non-existence”. Ansel Adams labelled him “the antichrist of photography”.
For decades, Steichen’s work was considered unfashionable and clichéd. Yet in February 2006, one of his earliest prints, “The Pond – Moonlight” (1904), sold for a little under $3m at auction – the highest price paid for an individual photographic print.
This absorbing and comprehensive exhibition at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris is the first retrospective of his work shown in Europe and illustrates why he so impressed and infuriated his contemporaries.
Born in Luxembourg, Steichen arrived in the United States aged 18 months. His family settled in Milwaukee, where an adolescent Steichen began an apprenticeship in lithography. Given his first camera in 1895, he spent much of his free time taking pictures of the Milwaukee woods.
Historians of photography distinguish three phases in Steichen’s development, and this show is arranged accordingly. In the first rooms, we see the amateur artist striving to master the medium’s techniques, and applying the aesthetics of impressionism, post-impressionism and symbolism. “Melting Snow, Milwaukee” (1899) is reminiscent of a Japanese wood-block print in its free-floating arrangement of dark and light forms, while “Edge of Woods, Milwaukee” (1900) presents an almost abstract composition. Blurred and misty, both are born of a fascination with light-diffusing techniques.
It is to this pictorialist period that Steichen’s elegiac “The Pond – Moonlight” belongs. So too does his striking nightscape, “Brooklyn Bridge”, of 1903. Yet even as he continued to train his gaze on objects and views, Steichen was also busy capturing the human form. His delicate nudes, like his brooding portraits, use chiaroscuro to dramatic effect. Shots of George Bernard Shaw (1907), Auguste Rodin (1907) and Anatole France (1909) have extraordinary warmth and uncanny clarity of expression. There are hints too of the modernist sensibility that would characterise Steichen’s later images – a focus on form over content, a preoccupation with technique, and an interest in the possibilities of montage.
Steichen’s place in the avant-garde of European and American art was secured through his collaboration with Alfred Stieglitz, the greatest proponent of photography as a fine art. Stieglitz edited the seminal quarterly, Camera Work, to which Steichen contributed photographs and for which he designed covers.
During the first world war, Steichen, an officer in the US army, was put in charge of aerial photography. From this stint making reconnaissance pictures, he developed a taste for clarity in images. He abandoned his preference for hazy vistas in favour of crisp close-ups and clear patterns. “Lotus” (1915), “Wheelbarrow with Flower Pots” (1920) and “Sunflower Seeds” (c. 1925) show an experienced eye adapting to the possibilities of an improved medium.
An unexpected lunch meeting with Condé Nast, owner of Vogue and Vanity Fair, resulted in a job as staff photographer, launching the second phase in Steichen’s career. As periodical publications for mass audiences began incorporating photography, Steichen was perfectly placed to combine taste with commercial acumen.
Colleagues, including Stieglitz, decried this mercantile turn. Yet the images Steichen created between the wars – the bulk of the Paris exhibition – are now classic. He lavished equal care on photographs made for advertising shoes as on pictures conceived for a gallery wall. He understood that the precise cut of a dress (“Model in a Gown by Vionnet”, 1925) deserved as much attention as did an atmospheric view of New York skyscrapers by night.
Steichen harnessed the aura of celebrity, creating thousands of portraits of the famous and the beautiful, from Winston Churchill to Fred Astaire. Outstanding among them is a much-imitated portrait of actress Gloria Swanson staring hauntingly from behind a black lace veil (1924). A new verb was coined: to be “Steichenized”.
The second world war saw the fashion photographer switch to documentary mode, and heralded a humanist sensibility that would reach its fullest expression when, as director of photography at MoMA, Steichen curated The Family of Man in 1955. Comprising more than 500 images by 273 photographers from 68 countries, this mammoth travelling exhibition was viewed by 9m people round the world – still a record for any photography show. It proved Steichen to be an innovative designer of exhibitions and a canny impresario.
The last room in the Jeu de Paume’s show offers a virtual tour of The Family of Man, shedding light on Steichen’s third creative phase – the artist as curator. By paying attention to his often provocative arrangements of other people’s work, viewers can better grasp Steichen’s views on photography as a medium for communicating ideas.
This ambitious and impressive exhibition will consolidate the reputation of one of the 20th-century’s key image-makers. It aims to be comprehensive and, with 450 original prints, it succeeds. If there is one criticism it is that there is too much, not too little. As photographer and museum curator, Steichen knew that less is more. The curators of Lives in Photography could have learnt a thing or two from him.
‘Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography’ is at Jeu de Paume, Paris, until December 30. www.jeudepaume.org