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In 1927, The American photographer Edward Steichen was traveling from Paris to New York with a long and elegant piece of cast bronze when U.S. customs officials stopped him at the border and demanded he pay $600 for importing a kitchen utensil. The object in question, however, was actually a sculpture by Constantin Brancusi titled "Bird in Space." "Steichen was infuriated," says Bill Ewing, exhibit curator and Steichen expert at the Mus?e de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. " 'Look,' he cried. 'It's a bird'." Though he tried to convince the officers that it was a piece of modern art and therefore exempt from duty, they saw no feathers and so made him pay. But Steichen refused to back down. A year later, with the help of the New York socialite Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, he sued and won when the Brancusi—one of a sixteen-part series that is spread among such museums as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art—was duly recognized for all its worth. "The ruling was a landmark—a turning point for the perception of art," says Ewing. And it signified Steichen's latest battle in his lifelong quest to challenge art's popular conventions.
Now Paris's Jeu de Paume celebrates that career with "Steichen: A Photographic Epic" (through Dec. 31), Europe's first posthumous retrospective of the Francophile photographer and innovator. In an esthetic tour de force, the exhibit features some 450 photographs, including 70 world premieres from the archives of Cond? Nast, where Steichen served as the photo director of both Vogue and Vanity Fair in the 1920s. Viewers can track the intriguing development of an artist who flitted between the United States—the promised land where his immigrant Luxembourgian parents had sought a new life—and Paris, the artistic mecca of the day. "The man was a precursor to his times," says Todd Brandow, cocurator and director of the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography. "He was a jet-setter before jets were invented."
His camera knew no limits. Photographs include exquisite platinum prints and photogravures from his teen years in Milwaukee as well as Parisian shots from his stint as a groupie to such modern masters as Rodin, Cézanne and Matisse. He took wartime documentary photographs on the front, immortalized New York and Paris high society, developed modern fashion photography and dabbled in advertising imagery for J.W. Thompson. Eventually he served as the indomitable curator of the photo department at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The show culminates in a virtual reconstruction of the acclaimed post-WWII exhibit he curated, "The Family of Man," a striking snapshot of the human experience (including some of his own photos) that trotted the globe in 1955, reaching some 9 million viewers worldwide. "He had several artistic and photographic careers," says Peter Galassi, Steichen's heir as director of photography at MoMA. "In each he made his mark."
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Above all, the exhibit demonstrates Steichen's role as a cultural conduit between Old World and New World. As the artistic emissary of photographer, gallerist and mentor Alfred Stieglitz, he introduced artists such as Picasso, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and, of course, Brancusi to American markets, exhibited their works at the now defunct New York gallery 291 and "played a pivotal role in the introduction of modern art to the United States," says Galassi. But he also constantly championed innovation, borrowing from, refining and adapting new techniques and notions of style and perception he found in Paris. Steichen introduced color photography to the United States in 1907; the autochrome technique he used was developed by the Lumi?re brothers in Paris. The Jeu de Paume hosts one of his earliest examples, "Profile of Charlotte Spaulding Albright With Flowers, 1908," a luminous portrait of a student and friend of his that had been lost for almost a century and was rediscovered in a garage in Rochester, New York, just this year.
Of course, Steichen is also famous for his fabulous modern portraits of high society: the dapper Fred Astaire in "Top Hat"; the androgynous allure of Marlene Dietrich; the pompous cheerfulness of Winston Churchill. When New York publishing tycoon Cond? Nast was seeking a photo director in 1923, he didn't have far to look. "A noble of French origin who didn't speak a word of French, Nast nonetheless felt Americans should emulate the French in matters of high culture after the war," says Ewing. He hired Steichen, whose camera became the interpreter of the golden age of haute couture in the 1920s and '30s.
In cleverly concocted cinematic photo shoots, Steichen immortalized the soft glow of femininity and the sharp, modern elegance of muses such as Marion Morehouse and Lee Miller. And, of course, he brought Parisian couture out of the closet and onto the American stage; his work focused on the sophistication and finesse of French style, incorporating Chanel chiffon robes, Schiaparelli crepe de Chine, Lanvin satin gowns and Vionnet velvet dresses. Though Nast sent Steichen memos urging him to "show off the clothes," Steichen did not quite follow the instructions, says Shawn Waldron, director of archives at Cond? Nast. "In each of his pictures, he falls in love with his subject for the time of the shot. Of course, we see the cut and the texture of the clothes, but above all, we see the woman underneath." His picture of Lee Miller standing in a Lelonggownin Nast's art deco living room captures the elegant lines of her flowing garment, but also the radiance, grace and vulnerability of the sublime model.
Steichen in effect invented advertising photography and heralded the advent of today's visual pop culture. He created the first fashion icons, which modern women would aspire to emulate for decades to come. "The glamour that exudes from his pictures is very real. He captures a timelessness that transcends fashion," says Brandow, contemplating a 1924 photograph of the Hollywood starlet Gloria Swanson that could have been published in last week's Vogue. It's impossible to tell whether Steichen was simply recording the turning points in popular culture or actually catalyzing them. But either way, photography wouldn't likely be where it is today without him.
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