Artist of the Month: Edward Steichen in High Fashion

Edward Steichen self-portrait, in the October 1929 Vanity Fair.

Gloria Swanson, photographed by Steichen in the February 1928 Vanity Fair.

In 2004, William Ewing, director of the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, came to the Condé Nast Archive while doing research for an upcoming Edward Steichen retrospective planned for 2007. Bill and his co-curator, Todd Brandow, were flabbergasted as a cart with more than 2,000 vintage Steichen prints was wheeled out before them. Bill had been told years earlier that there were only a few Steichen prints in the Archive at Condé Nast. He had even considered skipping it altogether, but decided he should do the due diligence. Steichen had had a very long and productive career, of which Vogue and Vanity Fair were only one part. Bill realized very quickly that the 40 or so prints from Steichen’s time at Condé Nast would not do this treasure trove justice. Bill, not one to shy away from a challenge, decided on the spot that a second show was not only possible, but necessary. The result was “Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years (1923-1937).” The show is a tour de force that has achieved critical acclaim and record attendance at a number of venues.

Eduard Steichen was born in Luxembourg in 1879, but soon moved to the United States and lived in the Midwest during most of his formative years. Steichen’s first experiments with photography used images taken with an early Kodak camera as realistic models for his illustrations and paintings. By 1900, he had become an American citizen, anglicized his name to “Edward,” and traveled to Paris to study art. Steichen was first published in Vogue in 1906, when his painting “The Apple Bloom” was reproduced for the May cover. After much success with Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession and Camera Work publications and exhibitions, Steichen moved back to America in 1922. A 1923 Vanity Fair article referred to Steichen as “the greatest of living portrait photographers,” and Steichen, having no permanent means of supporting his family, decided to write to editor-in-chief Frank Crowninshield. A luncheon was arranged, and Condé Nast offered Steichen a position as head photographer for Condé Nast Publications. In the early 1930s, Steichen, encouraged by Condé Nast and his new publishing resources, began to shoot in color and created the first color Vogue cover in July 1932.

From March 1923 to September 1937, Steichen worked extensively for Vogue and Vanity Fair with editors Edna Woolman Chase, Carmel Snow, and Frank Crowninshield, creating some of the period’s most iconic fashion images and portraits.[1] As written on the Web site of the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, which sponsored the “In High Fashion” show:

Vogue July 1, 1932 cover, photographed by Edward Steichen.

The full list of Steichen’s portraits is astounding for its range. Among the more than one thousand subjects were the filmmakers Cecil B. De Mille, Ernst Lubitsch, Irving Thalberg, Josef von Sternberg and Walt Disney; among the actors, Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields and Rudolph Valentino; among the actresses, Shirley Temple, Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich and Fay Wray; among the painters, Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault; among the writers, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, e.e. cummings, Luigi Pirandello and Colette; among the dancers, Martha Graham, Ruth St. Denis and Fred Astaire; among the musicians, Igor Stravinsky, Leopold Schakowsky, Vladimir Horowitz and George Gershwin; among the statesmen, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover; among the athletes, Jack Dempsey and Suzanne Lenglen; among the journalists, Clare Luce, Walter Winchell and Walter Lippmann. Often the portraits of women artists and actresses double as fashion statements; Colette in Chanel; Hepburn in Schiaparelli; Swanson in Chanel.[2]

“Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, 1923-1937” began on October 8, 2007 in Paris at the Jeu de Paume and has traveled throughout Europe and to New York City and Williamstown, MA. Currently the exhibit is in Toronto at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where it will remain until January 3, 2010. It will then travel to Fort Lauderdale, FL and Kansas City, MO during the first half of 2010.

“Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, 1923-1937” at the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography

[2] http://www.fep-paris.org/steichen-condenast