1337
Milwaukee Art Students League and on his appren-
ticeship in lithography, fi rst exhibiting photographs in
1899 at the Second Philadelphia Salon. While few have
achieved so many different careers in photography, he
seems no longer to be accorded the status he had in his
lifetime. The accusation that he kept changing horses
for fi nancial reasons may have stuck to his reputation:
it is indeed hard to image that his fashion and advertis-
ing photography of 1923 onwards for Condé Nast is the
same person as the painter and photographer protégé of
Alfred Steiglitz, as the man who persuaded Steiglitz to
open the 291 gallery in New York; the same photogra-
pher (more and more esteemed today) of those Whistler
diffused images when he was a member of the Linked
Ring (1901) and the Photo-Session (founder member
1902); the exclusive aesthetic interpreter of Rodin, one
of the fi rst photographers involved with colour, using
autochromes as early as 1904. Pictorialist Steichen,
still a painter then, also depicted brooding landscapes.
These early Steichen’s, essentially developed out of
19th century aesthetics, may well turn out to be his
golden period rather than his conversion to ‘Straight,’
then to ‘commercial art,’ or that he became curator at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1947–62),
and of the most successful photography exhibition ever
held: The Family of Man (1955). He was also a suc-
cessful breeder of delphiniums, an equal art, he would
have maintained.
Alistair Crawford
STEINHEIL, RUDOLPH (1865–1930)
Lens craftsman
Rudolph, the son of Adolph Steinheil, was the third
and last member of the famous dynasty of lens mak-
ers. An accomplished lens designer in his own right,
he took over the management of the business in 1893,
when he was just twenty-eight, following his father’s
sudden death.
Rudolph became responsible for the scientifi c direc-
tion of the fi rm at a time when photographic optics were
undergoing enormous changes following the introduc-
tion of new optical glasses such as those produced by
Schott and Abbe at Jena. He designed a new anastigmat
lens and two different types of orthostigmat lens, fol-
lowed by a number of other lenses, including the Un-
ofocal in 1901. Perhaps his greatest achievement was
in the design of lenses for astronomy. He constructed
several large telescopes for observatories in Germany
and other parts of the world. In 1910, he collaborated
with Carl Goerz in setting up the Sendlinger Glassworks
in Berlin.
Colin Harding
STELZNER, CARL FERDINAND
(1805–1894)
Carl Ferdinand Stelzner was born in 1805 in Flensburg
and adopted by Carl Gottlob Stelzner in Flensburg. He
married this man’s daughter Caroline Stelzner in 1834.
Both were successfully working in Hamburg since 1830
as miniaturists and portrait painters. In 1842 he opened
a photographic studio together with Hermann Biow but
the partnership was dissolved in 1843. When the city
of Hamburg burnt down in 1842, the studio of Biow &
Stelzner produced a series of photographs showing the
ruins. Carl Ferdinand Stelzner’s fame was for being the
fi rst and, for a long time, the best photographic portraitist
in Hamburg. A noted miniaturist before taking up pho-
tography he knew how to fi nd the moment of expression
in his clients’ faces, and even today his portraits are a lot
more vivid than those of his contemporaries, Hermann
Biow included.
His specialities included group pictures which he
managed to arrange in very lively settings. For the 15
years Carl Ferdinand Stelzner practised photography
he was virtually unsurpassed as a portraitist in the Ger-
man countries; even as a blind man he remained a well
heard spokesman in Hamburg’s photography. Due to
being blind since 1854, Stelzner’s studio was sold in
1858 to Oskar Fielitz from Braunschweig, a year later
to Heinrich Gustav Siemsen. Carl Ferdinand Stelzner
died on October 23, 1894.
Rolf SachsseSTEREOGRAPHIC SOCIETIES
The history of any society or organization is also a
history of the people and times within which it exists.
Stereographic societies make particularly interesting
reading, as their members have proved to be amongst
the most active and multi talented of all photographic
groups.
The Stereoscopic Club, formed in 1891, was the
earliest stereographic group in the world. It was founded
by Mr W.I. Chadwick, and it survived until 1905. Its
remaining members then moved into The Stereoscopic
Society, originally formed in 1893 as The Stereoscopic
Postal Exchange Club.
This society offered a wider variety of opportunities
and activities, such as meetings and distributing folios of
stereo view cards, by post. In 1896, it changed its name
to The Stereoscopic Society so as to better represent
its members overall interests in Stereoscopic imaging.
Its Founder/Secretary was Mr Charles Berti DiVeri. Its
fi rst President was Mr W.A. Whiston, followed by the
illustrious Dr W.W. Stainforth.
Today, The Stereoscopic Society thus remains as the