Edward Steichen
1932
Homeless Women

Gelatin silver print
13 5/8 x 10 5/8 ins
 
Source requested
Reprinted with permission of Joanna T. Steichen, Carousel Research.
 
Steichen described how he made this image: "Then there was the story of the homeless women in New York lodging houses during the Depression. It seemed that many women, old and young, jobless or too old to work and contribute to the food supply, left home and came to New York. When the Travelers Aid Society found such people, they put them up in lodging houses for the night. We were to do a brochure for the Travelers Aid Society, and I suggested that the agency bring up the first twenty women who came out of the lodging house in the morning. There was to be no selection. Each woman was to be given ten dollars. . . . To get the rudderless feeling of their story, I instructed each woman to look in a different direction."
 
Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1981), unp., located in Chapter 9, "Introducing Naturalism into Advertising."
 
LL/33276