Photographer and curator Edward Steichen was one of the most prominent and influential figures of 20th century photography. During his long career he worked in a variety of styles in black-and-white and in color; his subjects ranged from portraits and landscapes, to fashion and advertising photography, to photography of dance and sculpture. His early work demonstrated a mastery of soft-focus Pictorialism, yet after the First World War he became a proponent of the “straight” photography and the New Realism. Steichen’s entire body is noted for a highly developed sense of design. As a curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, for 15 years Steichen was responsible for many important exhibitions, including The Family of Man. Steichen was born Eduard Jean Steichen in Luxembourg. His family came to the United States in 1881 and settled in Hancock, Michigan; in 1889 they moved to Milwaukee. Steichen’s early interest in art was encouraged by his mother. He attended the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he was introduced to important contemporary works of art. At age 15, Steichen began a 4-year lithography apprenticeship at Milwaukee’s American Fine Art Company. From 1894 to 1898 he worked under Richard Lorenz and Robert Schode at the Milwaukee Art Students League. He began to photograph in 1895, but continued to pursue his career as a painter for the next 20 years. Steichen’s photographs received their first public showing at the Second Philadelphia Salon in 1899. The following year (in which he became a naturalized an American citizen), Steichen received encouragement from Clarence White, who prompted Alfred Stieglitz to purchase three Steichen prints. While in Paris at this time Steichen was deeply impressed by the work of Rodin, of whose work and person he would create many extraordinary images. Thirty-five Steichen photographs were included in F. Holland day’s The New School of American Photography exhibition in London and Paris in 1901. Steichen was elected to the Linked Ring at this time. In 1902 he became a founding member of the Photo-Secession and designed the cover of its journal, Camera Work, in which his work often was reproduced in the coming years. Steichen’s first one-man show of photographs and paintings was held at La Maison des Artistes in Paris the same year. In New York Steichen helped Stieglitz open the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (“291”) at which Steichen exhibited regularly. Steichen began experimenting with color photography in 1904 and was an early user of the Lurniere Autochrome process. He returned to Paris in 1906 and was responsible for selecting work to be exhibited by Stieglitz in New York. Among the artists whose work he sent on were John Marin, Picasso, Matisse, Brancusi, Cezanne, and Rodin. In 1910 thirty-one Steichen photographs were exhibited at the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography in Buffalo, which was curated by Stieglitz. The following year Steichen made his first fashion photographs, but he began devoting much of his time to painting. In 1913 Stieglitz wrote of the double issue of Camera Work devoted to Steichen’s photographs: “Nothing I have ever done has given me quite so much satisfaction as finally sending this Number out into the world.” As commander of the photographic division of the Army Expeditionary Forces in World War 1, Steichen became acquainted with aerial photography, which required a new precision. He became chief photographer for Conde Nast Publications in 1923, publishing regularly in Vogue and Vanity Fair for the next 15 years, being based in New York. In 1923, Vanity Fair heralded Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879-1973) as the greatest living portrait photographer, and within the year publisher Conde Nast appointed him as chief photographer for the magazine. For the next thirteen years, Steichen was America’s premier photographer of style, taste, and stardom. His work at Vanity Fair embraced numerous genres, but Steichen is best remembered for creating many of the icons of his age- movie personalities-whose likenesses in print and on screen helped to shape American’s popular culture. In the Hollywood portraits, Steichen infused his imagery with theatrical lighting and progressive ideals of design drawn from major art movements of the day, such as the streamlined forms of art deco and the elemental constructions of cubism. The men, including Fred Astaire and Charlie Chaplin, boast all the genteel accoutrements of a refined elegance coupled with robust individuality. And the women, among them Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, project a liberated self-possessed demeanor. Steichen’s original portrait photographs of Hollywood celebrities are manifestations of the American public’s consuming fascination with celebrity and fame, both then and now. He was also employed as an advertising photographer by the J. Walter Thompson Agency. Among Steichen’s sitters during these years were his brother-in-law Carl Sandburg, Greta Garbo, Charles Chaplin, Gloria Swanson and H. L Mencken. Steichen’s relationship with Stieglitz was strained over issues concerning commercial and advertising work to which Stieglitz objected. Steichen believed that his fashion and other commercial photography could be raised to the level of art. In 1938 Steichen retired from commercial photography. He became Director of the U.S. Naval Photographic Institute in 1945, was placed in command of all combat photography, and was discharged in 1946 with the rank of captain. During the war years Steichen organized the Road to Victory and Power in the Pacific exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From 1947 to 1962 Steichen was director of the department of Photography at the Museum. He did no photographic work of his own during these years, but was responsible for nearly 50 shows, including the Family of Man (for which he selected images from over two million photographs and which became the most popular exhibition in the history of photography as well as a best-selling book), The Bitter Years, and the Diogenes with a Camera series. In 1961 Steichen was honored by a one-man show of his photographs at the Museum of Modern Art. The Edward Steichen Photography Center was established at the museum in 1964. In 1967 Steichen wrote, “Today I am no longer concerned with Photography as an art form. I believe it is potentially the best medium for explaining man to himself and to his fellow man.” Steichen died in West Redding, Connecticut, shortly before his 94th birthday.