History & Criticism - General & Miscellaneous Photography, Individual Photographers & Professionals, Photo-Secession, Urban Photography

Steichen's Legacy

Name: Steichen's Legacy
Author: Joanna Steichen
ISBN: 9780679450764

by Joanna Steichen

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Overview

A magnificent book—315 photographs by Edward Steichen, the man Auguste Rodin called "the greatest photographer of his time."

        This is the first gathering in thirty years of Steichen's photographs, spanning seven decades: the landscapes, the haunting studies of flowers, the portraits of friends and family, the still lifes and cityscapes. Here are fashion photographs taken during the fifteen years Steichen worked for Vogue. And here too are the breathtaking portraits he made for Vanity Fair: Colette, Noel Coward, Greta Garbo, Willa Cather, Isadora Duncan . . . William Butler Yeats, Henri Matisse, Thomas Mann . . . George Gershwin, Amelia Earhart, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (taken when he was governor of New York—a standard pose, the decisive leader in his chair—but later, when FDR was president, cropped by Steichen to show the sad, serious face of a visionary acquainted with suffering).

        In a personal and illuminating text, Joanna Steichen writes about her husband's passionate views on photography; about how he moved away from painting (his understanding and support of modernism helped bring the movement to this country); about his experiments with abstraction; about the repercussions of commercial success in his life as an artist; about how he and Joanna first met (through the mischievous intervention of Steichen's brother-in-law, Carl Sandburg) and how their relationship changed as they became lovers, man and wife and, finally, artist and assistant.

        Joanna Steichen writes aboutSteichen's days as a colonel in World War I, in charge of aerial photography for the Air Force in France, and then as a captain in the Navy—past the age of retirement—in World War II, in charge of combat photography in the Pacific. She writes about his years as the European art scout for his friend Alfred Stieglitz, and of how Steichen later designed the gallery for the Photo-Secession's 291 and arranged exhibitions of the work of Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso and Brancusi, long before these names were known in America. And she writes about the couple's farm in Connecticut, which Steichen landscaped out of woods and rocks and hollows and photographed over the years, as well as the new hybrid of delphinium Steichen produced and the sunflowers he raised and studied through his lens.

Carl Sandburg said: "A scientist and a speculative philosopher stands back of Steichen's best pictures. They will not yield their meaning and essence on the first look nor the thousandth—which is the test of masterpieces."

Steichen's Legacy is a book of masterpieces.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

With his astounding lifetime of work, beginning at the turn of the century and continuing through the 1920s and '30s at Vogue and Vanity Fair and later as the director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, photographer Edward Steichen revolutionized photography as a 20th-century art form. Auguste Rodin called him "the greatest photographer of his time." Steichen's Legacy, produced in conjunction with an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art and overseen by his widow, Joanna Steichen, takes its place as the definitive collection of his work.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

If one has encountered the ubiquitous black and white posters of New York's severe, pre-WWII cityscape, one has probably encountered modernist photographic pioneer Edward Steichen. But the pictures collected here present a much richer Steichen (1879-1973) than the common perception of a purist and aesthete. Joanna Steichen, the photographer's third wife, has culled these 308 b&w and color photos by considering "visual theme and emotional communication over chronology and initial function," highlighting his unabashed sense of grandeur and technical precision. The advertisements Steichen did for the J. Walter Thompson agency--including a remarkable shot of a woman applying lipstick in an angled mirror while her swell looks on and smokes--and his portraits of presidents from Taft and Teddy Roosevelt to FDR put the cityscapes, landscapes and still lifes (like Matches and Match Boxes) in a rich, capital-drenched context that's much more clear here than in previous collections. The excellent page-sized reproductions are augmented by Joanna Steichen's very detailed, memoirish ("I was twenty-six, tall, broad shouldered, slim but sturdy, well-groomed down to my white cotton gloves.... It was July 20th, 1959") account of Steichen's life and career. The text can be heavy-handed, and there is a lot of it, but for the most part the writing is performed with care for, and preservation of, Steichen's work first and foremost. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Steichen left a vast body of work demonstrating innovation and creativity and a strong push to find the technical limits of photography. His career with a camera spanned so many years that he could make periodic discoveries (overlapping negatives, early color, etc.) and then pursue them from experimentation, to mastery, to leadership in artistic expression. Joanna Steichen is sensitive to this progression, yet she wisely gathers the works here by subject--from landscapes, to fashion, to human form--and demonstrates that Steichen's eye was always piercing and informative regardless of era or technique. At 27, Joanna Steichen married the 81-year-old photographer, for whom the relationship was less about love and partnership than about her assignments as secretary, assistant, and organizer of his work. She writes beautifully, though her prose is built on the foundation of his ego and single-minded attention to his personal goals. With 315 photographs and Joanna Steichen's attention to detail, this book makes a major contribution to the life and work of Edward Steichen and to 20th-century photography.--David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Rosemary Ranck

This abundance of images gives a good picture of Steichen's breadth and artistry -- urban scenes, portraits of financiers, artists and actors, Gorham flatware, propaganda and exquisitely rendered images of plants and flowers. From Joanna Steichen we see what a life force Steichen was, even in his 80's. And from the book's elegant reproductions, we get a good sense of the times that Steichen helped create.
—New York Times Book Review