Biography (Courtesy of Christian Peterson)
 
Steichen, one of this country's most recognized twentieth-century photographers, led a long and varied career in the field. He was a practitioner, working in many genres after giving up pictorialism around 1915, and a curator, organizing exhibitions at the Museum of Modern of Art, New York.
 
Eduard Jean Steichen was born on March 27, 1879, in the small European country of Luxembourg. Two years later, he immigrated with his family to the United States and settled in Michigan. From 1889, he lived in Milwaukee, where he served a one-year apprenticeship at the American Fine Art Company, a lithographic printing firm. He helped organize the Milwaukee Art Students' League in 1897 and served as its first president.
 
After photographing for about four years, Steichen burst upon the American photographic scene in 1899, when he exhibited three particularly impressionistic pictures in the second Philadelphia Photographic Salon. He was determined to be an artist, and the next year set out for Europe to continue his studies. Stopping in New York on the way, he met Alfred Stieglitz, who purchased three of his pictorial photographs.
 
For the next few years, Steichen lived in Paris, where he painted and made photographic portraits of famous writers and artists, such as August Rodin. His photographs were included in the 1900 London and 1901 Paris showings of the New School of American Photography, organized by F. Holland Day. In 1901, he was elected to membership in the Linked Ring Brotherhood, England's most advanced order of photographers. In addition, his paintings were seen in Paris in the 1901 salon and the next year in a one-person exhibition at La Maison des Artistes.
 
In 1902, Steichen returned to New York and set up a portrait studio. The same year, he became a founding member of the Photo-Secession, Stieglitz's elite cadre of artistic photographers, when his work was included in the group's inaugural show at New York's National Arts Club. Stieglitz featured Steichen's work in all of the Secession's subsequent museum exhibitions, occurring in 1904 at the Carnegie Institute (Pittsburgh) and Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), in 1906 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia), and in 1910 at the Albright Art Gallery (Buffalo).
 
Steichen's artistic and printing background led him to design the cover of Stieglitz's new quarterly, Camera Work, in 1903. Over the next fifteen years, Steichen was privileged to have more of his work seen in the magazine than any other pictorialist, usually as high-quality photogravures. Stieglitz devoted three full issues to his work, in 1903, 1906, and 1913. In 1905, Steichen also helped Stieglitz establish the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, which later became known as 291, for its address on Fifth Avenue. There, Steichen's photographs were featured in an unmatched four solo shows, in 1906, 1908, 1909, and 1910. His work was also seen at major pictorial presentations in this country and internationally throughout the first decade of the century. Making primarily landscapes and portraits during this time, he used a variety of photographic printing processes, like platinum and gum bichromate, as well as Lumière Autochrome plates, which created softly focused, color transparencies.
 
From 1906 to the outbreak of World War I, Steichen resided again in Paris, where he continued to both paint and photograph. From there, he secured the work of such avant-garde artists as Rodin, Henri Matisse, and Paul Cézanne for their first American showings, at 291. During the war, he served in the U.S. Army, helping establish its department of aviation photography.
 
In 1923, shortly after giving up painting with a ritualistic burning of many canvases, Steichen returned to New York. For the next fifteen years, he was the chief photographer for Condé Nast, his pioneering fashion work appearing in the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair. He also performed advertising work for the J. Walter Thompson Agency and became the world's most well-compensated professional photographer.
 
Steichen retired from commercial work in 1938, but during World War II directed all U.S. Naval photography. In 1947, he was appointed director of the curatorial department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Among the important exhibitions he organized there over the next fifteen years was the Family of Man, perhaps the most widely traveled photography show ever.
 
In 1963, a year after leaving the museum, Steichen was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and issued his autobiography, A Life in Photography. He died ten years later in West Redding Connecticut, on March 25, 1973, two days shy of his ninety-fourth birthday.
 
Christian A. Peterson Pictorial Photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Christian A. Peterson: Privately printed, 2012)
 
This biography is courtesy and copyright of Christian Peterson and is included here with permission.
 
Date last updated: 1 June 2013.
 
Biography provided by Focal press
 
A pivotal figure in the growth of creative photography in America, Steichen was one of the founders, with Steiglitz, of the Photo-Secession (1902) and The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (known as 291) in New York. Introducing the modernist work of Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, and Rodin to America with debut exhibits at 291, he was also a frequent contributor to Stieglitz' Camera Work magazine. He produced images of rich tonal depth and romantic sensibility; his early pictorialist use of manipulated gum and pigment printing processes were abandoned for a more precise, pragmatic style. His stylized fashion and celebrity images of the 1920s, published frequently in Vanity Fair and Vogue, were notable for their simple, theatrical settings; dramatic lighting and architectonic backdrops; and had an aura of impersonal cosmopolitan elegance. Shaped by his entrepreneurial spirit and his infatuation with celebrity and prestige, Steichen's career flourished as Director of Photography for Condé Nast publications (1923-1938). His career, twice punctuated with army and navy combat photographic service during both world wars, eventually led to the museum world. One of his most celebrated achievements came as Director of the Photography Department, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1947–1962) with his marketing of large themed exhibitions of photography, including the hugely popular The Family of Man (1955).
 
(Author: GW)
 
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409] (Used with permission)
 
Wikipedia