Fashion Photography - Edward Steichen

Fashion Photography

Edward Steichen

Agnes Inspired  by the image above

Inspiration from EDWARD STEICHEN

THE FIRST "MODERN" FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER: EDWARD STEICHEN

Edward Steichen: Self-Portrait with Photographic Paraphernalia, New York, 1929

Edward Steichen: Evening shoes by Vida Moore, 1927

Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was already a famed Pictorialist photographer and painter in the United States and abroad when he was offered the position of chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair by Condé Nast. Upon assuming the job, the forty-four year old artist began one of the most lucrative and controversial careers in photography.

To Alfred Stieglitz and his followers, Steichen was seen as damaging the cause of photography as a fine art by agreeing to do commercial editorial work. Nevertheless, Steichen’s years at Condé Nast magazines were extraordinarily prolific and inspired. 

He began by applying the soft focus style he had helped create to the photography of fashion. But soon he revolutionized the field, banishing the gauzy light of the Pictorialist era and replacing it with the clean, crisp lines of Modernism. In the process he changed the presentation of the fashionable woman from that of a distant, romantic creature to that of a much more direct, appealing, independent figure. At the same time he created lasting portraits of hundreds of leading personalities in movies, theatre, literature, politics, music, and sports, including Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Colette, Winston Churchill, Amelia Earhart, Jack Dempsey, Noel Coward, Greta Garbo, Dorothy Parker, and Cecil B. De Mille. 

Edward Steichen: Actor Gary Cooper, 1930

Greta Garbo

Steichen's approach to fashion photography was formative, and over the course of his career he changed public perceptions of the American woman. An architect of American Modernism and a Pictorialist, Steichen exhibited his fashion images alongside his art photographs (generating quite a bit of controversy among contemporary artists at the time). Steichen's crisp, detailed, high-key style revolutionized fashion photography, and his influence is felt in the field to this day—Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Bruce Weber are among his stylistic successors.

Above are just a few examples of an extraordinary body of work by Edward Steichen.