Edward Steichen : From a man of his time to an artist out of time

Edouard Jean Steichen was born on 27^th March, 1879 in Bivange, Luxembourg. He was barely 2 years old when his parents moved to the United States, in the continuity of the great European migrations, driven by the hope of a more prosperous life in a country across the ocean. For young Edouard it would be the first of a long series of back and forth trips between the old continent and the young one.

In the United States, the family settled in Hancock, Michigan and life got smoothly organised. First a new child was born, Lilian. Then Eduard’s mother started a small hat business. Very determined, pragmatic and open-minded she managed the finances of the family and became committed to the cause of women, more especially the women’s right to vote.

His father was a dreamer. He was working in a copper mine, was in poor health and he preferred to devote himself to his garden, sharing with his children his passion for plants. Edouard began attending Pio Nono College, a Catholic boys’ high school, where he quickly got bored accepting with reluctance to follow the rules. He soon became noted because of the jokes he was never short of and his aptitude for art.

His teachers, as well as his mother, encouraged him to hone his skills as a painter and a drawer. He developed a passionate interest for those activities, and even sometimes gave a little personal boost to his creativity.

In the early 19^th century, for his 21^st birthday, Edouard Steichen became a US citizen under the name Edward Steichen. In the same year, at a moment when his exhibitions were becoming more and more successful at Philadelphia Salon, Chicago Salon or in private circles..., he set sail with his best friend for a bicycle ride through Europe. It was the beginning of a new life for Steichen between Europe and the United States, enriched by encounters, events or inspirations.
Once settled in Paris, Steichen met Rodin. Between artistic collaboration and sincere friendship, their interest is immediately mutual. Later Steichen was to name his daughter Kate Rodina as a tribute to Rodin when he became her godfather. The photographer was much impressed by the sculptor’s use of material and this last one was fascinated by a man who could freeze a moment while letting his imagination and creativity run free. For one year Steichen did a series of portraits as well as photos of his sculptures.

Steichen enrolled at the Académie Julian to learn painting but quickly abandoned studies that he thought too academic. Well integrated in the cultural, artistic and intellectual circles of the pre-war swirling Paris, he photographed several personalities like Anatole France, Richard Strauss or Henri Matisse.

In 1923 for his 44^th birthday, Steichen remarried to actress Dana Desboro Glover and the couple settled permanently in New York. From 1923 to 1938, he worked for the Condé Nast publications as the chief photographer. He raised the standards of fashion and commercial photography taking portraits of famous people or film stars like Greta Garbo, and had his photos published in Vogue whose first colored cover page he would realise in 1932. He also worked for Vanity Fair and was to become the highest paid photographer of his generation.

Celebrity didn’t make him abandon his convictions. Together with the portraits of famous African-American people that he had made in the 1920s, he published for the first time a portrait on a page by the American artist Florence Mills for Vanity Fair in 1924. He also realised a portrait of Paul Robeson, the first African-American actor to play a starring role in an American film in 1933.

He purchased a house in Redding, Co, where he definitely settled in 1938. He left Condé Nast and devoted himself to his passion for botany. He went back to his old love for delphiniums and harnessed his passion so far as to organise in 1936 an exhibition at the MoMA. Plants that Steichen had raised himself were shown for one week only. Between 1935 and 1939 he even became the president of the American Delphinium Society.

When he was named the director of the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1947 to 1962, Steichen’s photographer career became secondary and he dedicated his time to make other artists famous.

He organised 44 exhibitions in 15 years and published his autobiography A Life in Photography, the story about a man whose life and art concept were merging. In 1951 during the Cold War, he realised his third exhibition at the MoMA Korea – The Impact of War – which didn’t meet the success he had been expecting.

Steichen then turned towards something he had long been maturing. He began preparing his project The Family of Man. Travelling through Europe and the United Sates he collected the photographs that would compose his exhibition. It opened at MoMA in 1955, then toured the world until 1965 as a consecration of his most ambitious project: to explore the potential of photography as a means of communication and prove its capacity to interact with the world as much as it was showing it.

The exhibition was gathering 503 photographs by 273 amateur and professional photographers from 68 countries. It was shown in nearly 160 museums and welcomed about 10 million visitors in 10 years.

In 1957 his second wife’s death after 34 years of marriage left Steichen devastated. And yet in 1960 he remarried Joanna Taub -54 years his junior. In 1961 he realised his last exhibition under the simple title Steichen the Photographer. When he retired, he was named Director Emeritus of the MoMA and was responsible for selecting the photographs that would build up his last exhibition as a curator The Bitter Years. In 1964 the Edward Steichen Photography Centre opened at the MoMA.

Edward Steichen died on March 25^th, two days before his 94^th birthday. What he left as a legacy to photography and what he taught about, its worldwide scope will never cease to inspire the future generations of photographers and its print will always persist in Luxembourg.