MuseoMag: MuseoMag 2015_02

MuseoMag 2015_02

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Title:: MuseoMag

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Title:: MuseoMag 2015_02

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Title:: "The American Dream" of Edward Steichen: An homage to a career in photography

6 museomag 02 ‘ 2015 Edward Steichen’s life was as multi-facetted and pro- lific as was his career, and there would be many ways to tell his story. There is, for instance, the perspective of the migrant family, forced to leave a native country that offered no hopes for the future to seek a better life elsewhere. Home was Luxembourg, more precisely the village of Bivange where Steichen was born in 1879, and elsewhere, the land of limitless possibilities, the United States, of course. Marie Steichen embarked with her infant son Eduard in 1880. The father, Jean, had ar- rived in the USA a year earlier already. From this point of view, the Steichen family was one of many who set out for the New World. Over 72.000 is the estimated number of Luxembourg emigrants between 1841 and 1891 while the country counted a total population, in 1891, of 212.800 people. Few however had an equally brilliant ascension as Edward Steichen. A TALE OF SUCCESS AND FAME In fact, he lived “the American dream”, climbing every sprout of the social ladder – from the son of immigrants confounded at the bottom in the masses, to the very top of the heap as one of America’s most prominent and most influential figures in the field of photogra- phy. He portrayed the rich (J.P. Morgan), the power- ful (Theodore Roosevelt), the illustrious (Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin); he befriended the esteemed (Rodin, Brancusi), championing their work, building bridges between European and American artistic communi- ties. Steichen’s story is a tale of success and, ultimately, fame. His career spanned over eight decades, from the early 1890s to his death in 1973. At an early stage of his life in photography, as pictorialist, he helped estab- lishing the medium as an art form, together with his mentor and friend Alfred Stieglitz in New York. This was an important step: for decades the mechan- ical fabrication of images had only been valued as a “THE AMERICAN DREAM” OF EDWARD STEICHEN AN HOMAGE TO A CAREER IN PHOTOGRAPHY The MNHA collection perfectly reflects Steichen’s wide-ranging career and the multiple facets of his own photographic work. © éric chenal

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