From Luxembourg and America to The World: Edward Steichen’s Photographic Legacy &Ndash; By David J. Marcou
by Edward Steichen, one of the world’s greatest photographers, was born in Luxembourg and raised in Milwaukee, WI. He led photographic units in both world wars, and in-between was the top portrait photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair. He went on to direct the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he curated the greatest group photo-exhibition until then, "The Family of Man". His early and middle years are of especial interest, in learning more about the influences that shaped him, and are suggested well in this article by David J. Marcou.
From Luxembourg and America to the World: Edward Steichen’s Photographic Legacy– By David J. Marcou – La Crosse, WI.
Editorial Note: In December 2003, a truck marked “Wide Load” made its way quietly along Pilgrim Road from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, to Old Falls Village, a distance of only four miles along County Line Road. James Auer, art critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, did not report that activity until August 23, the next year, but when he did, he let Wisconsin know and whoever else wanted to know, that that truck was carrying something very special. He wrote about: “Its precious but plain-looking cargo: the modest white farmhouse that had once been the home of the Luxembourg-born, Milwaukee-reared photographer, curator and chronicler of battles, Edward Jean Steichen.”
Image via Wikipedia
For many years, the Menomonee Falls Historical Society had worked to bring that farmhouse those four basic miles, so it could be outfitted as a museum memorializing Mr. Steichen and his family. This move was the “only local observance of the 125th anniversary of Mr. Steichen’s birth.” The only other one this writer knows of was his March 2004 cover-story for Britain’s RPS Journal. That Royal Photographic Society magazine is the oldest surviving periodical dedicated to photography, more than 155 years old. That solo cover-story indicates how far into faded memory Mr. Steichen’s legacy may have passed, though his works still sell for considerable fortunes, as proved by the sale of his “The Pond—Moonlight” in February 2006 for the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction until then, $2.9 Million. To be sure, then, his achievements for three-quarters of a century should be remembered for as long as artists live and create beautiful, useful works.(1)
When its very successful gala preview opened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on January 25, 1955, many people had already heard of “The Family of Man’s” director, Edward Steichen, whom the sculptor Rodin once called, “the greatest photographer of his time.” But few knew Steichen had strong ties to Wisconsin. Despite there being many famous photographers once calling the Badger State home — including H.H. Bennett, Eudora Welty (an excellent photographer, though she is better-known as a Southern writer, who attended college in Wisconsin), and Lewis Hine – the “Captain”, as MOMA staff called Steichen from his WWII rank, was the most famous and successful of them all.
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