Edward Steichen
7 quotes
Biography
Edward Jean Steichen was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter and curator and a pioneer of fashion photography. His gown images for the magazine Art et Décoration in 1911 were the first modern fashion photographs to be published.
"Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product."
"Photography is a major force in explaining man to man."
"When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration."
"He used lighting to create these kind of abstract environments for his subjects—in our show, there's a portrait of Maurice Chevalier dancing while holding his hat, but the shadows of him and his arm look like they're almost dancing in these abstract forms. The focus is very much on him and his face, yet it's all constructed in a very modernist environment."
"I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself."
"Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face - the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man."
"The boy and girl going hand in hand through a meadow the mother washing her baby the sweet simple things in life. We have almost lost track of them. On the one side we overintel-lectualize everything on the other hand we are over-mechanized. We can understand the danger of the atomic bomb but the danger of our misunderstanding the meaning of life is much more serious."