The Whitney Visual Explorer

Artist

Edward Steichen

1879–1973

54 works in the collection 6 exhibitions at the Whitney

Biography

Edward Steichen was one of the most important American photographers of the early twentieth century. A contemporary of Alfred Stieglitz and F. Holland Day, Steichen began his career as a painter and a photographer in the atmospheric and painterly style of Pictorialism. Following service in World War I as an aerial photographer, Steichen abandoned painting and began to develop a more modernist approach to photography, presenting his subjects with greater volume, scale, and clarity of form. At the age of forty-four, after receiving recognition among artistic circles in the United States and Europe, he began a career in the commercial world.

From 1923 to 1937 Steichen worked as chief photographer for Condé Nast Publications, photographing actors, writers, artists, and statesmen for Vanity Fair and fashion and society figures for Vogue. Paul Robeson as the Emperor Jones depicts Robeson as Brutus Jones in the 1933 film adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones. Steichen portrays the compelling strength of the Jones character as well as the powerful presence of Robeson, an actor, singer, scholar, and political and social rights activist. The dramatic, abstract framing of Robeson and the starkly contrasting light and shadow are hallmarks of Steichen’s influential style. Yet it is Steichen’s ability to “awaken a genuine response” in his subjects that made him one of the greatest portrait photographers of his day.

Works in the collection

Exhibitions at the Whitney