Further Reading
Hoeneveld, Herman. ‘‘100 foto’s als een bloemlezing: oude
bekenden en nieuwe gezichten.’’Kunstbeeld, vol. 20
(1996) no. 9: 40–43.
Pieters, Din, ed.A Survey of the Collection. Amsterdam:
Stedelijk Museum, 1989.
Visser, Hripsime ́.100 X Photo 100 Photographs from the
Collection of the Stedelijk Museum. Bussum: Thoth,
1996.
Schoonhoven, Han. ‘‘Het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
exposeert een overzicht uit haar fotografiecollectie.’’
Foto, vol. 51 (1996) no. 9: 66–73.EDWARD STEICHEN
American
Edward Steichen is a photographer, graphic de-
signer, painter, and pioneering museum curator
whose name resounds throughout the history of
twentieth-century art; his role in the unfolding of
twentieth-century photography was significant in
how his sensibility, bridging the fine arts, commer-
cial, and popular arenas shaped perceptions of the
medium for much of the century. Steichen’s photo-
graphic oeuvre is immense, and it demonstrates
styles and topics that mirror the aesthetic develop-
ments of the early years of the century in which he
participated. As did his colleague Alfred Stiegliz,
Steichen worked in the Pictorialist idiom and went
on to experimental, modernist photography. An
important practitioner and innovator in the fields
of fashion photography and advertising photogra-
phy, he also made striking portraits and land-
scapes, and he created important thematic series
in both black and white and color of flowers, sculp-
tural studies, and dance documentation. Described
as flamboyant and a natural showman, Steichen
popularized photography in ways that sometimes
distressed the more serious minded.
Steichen’s career may be best grasped by ac-
knowledging its three poles: his production as a
fine-arts photographer and founding member of
the Photo-Secession, which sought to establish the
medium as equal to the traditional artistic med-
iums; his commercial work for prestigious maga-
zines like Vogue; and his work as creator and
designer, with Stieglitz, of a magazine about mod-
ernity: Camera Work, the organ of the Photo-
Secession,and his role as an exhibition organizer
and curator. Steichen was responsible for one of
the best-known photography exhibitions of the
century,The Family of Man, which appeared at
the Museum of Modern Art in 1955 and traveled
around the world.
Born Eduard Jean Steichen in Luxembourg in
1879, he was a young child when his family moved
to United States in 1881. The Steichens settled in the
small mining town of Hancock, Michigan, but relo-
cated to Milwaukee when Eduard was10, where, as
a result of his mother’s successful millinery busi-
ness, the family’s situation greatly improved. It
was his mother who introduced him to the world
of ideas and aesthetics, and she enabled him to
purchase his first camera. A seminal experience of
his youth was his attendance at the 1893 World’s
Columbia Exposition in Chicago, famous for dis-
playing all that was modern and up-to-date, includ-
ing works of art. He simultaneously studied painting
at Milwaukee’s Art Students League and undertook
an apprenticeship in lithography, which he com-
pleted at age 19, during which he realized his first
photographic works, shown at the Second Philadel-
phia Photographic Salon in 1899 (includingThe Lady
in the Doorway, in 1897 andWood Interior,1898).In
parallel, showing his considerable organizational
abilities, he brought together a group dubbed the
Milwaukee’s Art Students League where he pursued
painting, which he continued to practice for more
than 20 years.
Nineteen-hundred was a turning point in Stei-
chen’s life. Traveling to New York with the inten-
tion of going on to Paris to continue his painting
studies, he met Clarence White, who in turn recom-
mended him to Stieglitz. With his new associations,
he immersed himself in Pictorialist photography,
creating one of his best-known works of this style,
a self-portrait as a dandified painter who looks as if
he has stepped out of the galleries of the Louvre. In
1901, he traveled to Paris for the first time, and
here he was introduced to sculptor Auguste RodinSTEICHEN, EDWARD