Edward Jean Steichen (1879 - 1973)

Edward Steichen arrived in the United States as a child in 1881.  He spent his youth in Milwaukee, where at age 15 he was apprenticed to one of Milwaukee’s many lithographic shops.  At age 16, Steichen began his exploration of photography.  Although this interest in photography was to dominate his artistic career, his early interest in other media is exemplified in his early watercolors of Wisconsin Dells which he completed when he was 19 years old.  Because of the geographical link to the Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin’s early photographer of the Wisconsin Dells, Harry Hamilton Bennett, may have influenced Steichen’s interest in photography.  Very few of his paintings remain because of an episode in 1922 when he burned whatever paintings he had and dedicated himself exclusively to photography.

In 1898, Steichen organized and became the first president of the Milwaukee Art Students’ League. By 1900 the young 20-year-old left Wisconsin for good and went to Paris to study painting.  His stay there was short and by 1902 he was in New York where he was one of the co-founders of the New York Photo-Secession group.  During World War I, Steichen was an aerial photographer and during the twenties and thirties, he did fashion photography for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines.  In 1947, he became Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Steichen’s sense for creativity in capturing an essence of the scene allowed him to achieve international fame.