Edward Steichen

Edward Steichen (1879–1973) was a Luxembourg-born American photographer, painter, and curator who helped establish photography as modern art and organized the influential exhibition The Family of Man.

The Family of Man: A 1955 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, organized by Steichen, that presented photographs of shared human experiences. This landmark exhibition crystallized his curatorial vision and became his best-known public project.
Pictorialism: An art-photography movement that used composition and printing techniques to emphasize photographs’ expressive, handmade qualities. Steichen’s early work adopted pictorialist methods before he moved toward sharper modernist photography.
Alfred Stieglitz: An American photographer and publisher who promoted photography as an art and founded the Photo-Secession. Stieglitz exhibited Steichen’s early work and collaborated with him on the journal Camera Work.
Photography at the Museum of Modern Art: The development of photography exhibitions and collections at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. As the museum’s director of photography, Steichen made large-scale exhibitions central to its photographic program.
Straight photography: A photographic approach that favors direct, relatively unmanipulated images over painterly printing effects. Its emphasis on photographic clarity diverged from the hand-worked pictorialism of Steichen’s early prints.
The Pond—Moonlight: A 1904 photograph by Steichen, made with layered color gum-bichromate printing to depict moonlight over a pond. It exemplifies his early pictorialist approach and his experimentation with photographic processes.
Autochrome Lumière: An early color photography process that used dyed starch grains on glass to produce transparencies. Steichen used this process in color photographs, exploring effects unavailable in monochrome prints.
Auguste Rodin: A French sculptor whose expressive works helped shape modern sculpture. Steichen photographed Rodin and his sculptures, producing images that joined portraiture with photographic interpretation of art.
Museum of Modern Art: A New York museum founded in 1929 to collect and exhibit modern and contemporary art. Steichen’s curatorial work at MoMA gave photography prominent institutional visibility.
Photojournalism: The practice of reporting news and events through photographs and accompanying text. The Family of Man borrowed photojournalistic images but arranged them as a universal humanist narrative.

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