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
