Photographer Edward Steichen was born on this day in 1879.
Picture Perfect Pictorialism
Photographer Edward Steichen was born on this day in 1879.
As a co-founder, with Alfred Stieglitz, of the Photo-Secession in 1902, Steichen adopted the Pictorialist style in his early photographs and was also influenced by the romantic themes of the Symbolists. A painter as well as a photographer, Steichen lived in Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century, where he briefly studied at the Académie Julian and was also well acquainted with avant-garde artists such as Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse. . . . Rejecting Pictorialism after the war, Steichen showed a new appreciation for the straightforward photograph with its distinctive clarity.
In 1923 Steichen was appointed chief photographer for Condé Nast publications, including Vogue and Vanity Fair, and became known for his portraits of fashionable Americans. He met Jean Walker Simpson at Auguste Rodin's studio in Paris, and the two became close friends. She was the daughter of John Walker Simpson, a prominent New York lawyer and art collector who owned at least two paintings by Steichen. In this picture, he merges fashion photography with the tradition of the Renaissance painted portrait, depicting Simpson in profile, wearing an amber necklace and a gold headband.
Source: Merry A. Foresta. American Photographs: The First Century (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996).
Pictured: Edward Steichen (1879 Luxembourg–1973 USA), Jean Walker Simpson,1923, palladium print, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment .