Tag: Edward Steichen

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange found the soul of documentary photography in her photographs of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, and those of the forced resettlement of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.

“You know, so often it’s just sticking around and being there, remaining there, not swooping out in a cloud of dust: sitting down on the ground with people, letting children look at your camera with their dirty, grimy little hands, and putting their fingers on the lens, and you just let them, because you know that if you will behave in a generous manner, you are apt to receive it, you know?” – Dorothea Lange

Early Years

Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn was born on May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, NJ to Heinrich Nutzhorn and Johanna Lange. Her father was a lawyer, born of German immigrants. Her mother was a soprano concert singer and later a librarian.

She grew up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and attended public school at PS 62 on Hester Street. She didn’t particularly like school and often skipped classes. School didn’t become any easier for her when, at the age of 7, she contracted polio. She survived but was left with a withered right leg, a twisted, crabbed right foot and a limp that would be with her the rest of her life. You can imagine the teasing she got from her fellow classmates. Even her mother was ashamed to take her out in public. Lange expressed her attitude about her disability this way.

“I was physically disabled, and I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been semi-crippled knows how much that means. I think it perhaps was the most important thing that happened to me. It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me. All those things at once. I’ve never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and the power of it.”

When she was twelve, her father abandoned their family. It’s not known why but he was never heard from again. Lange never spoke of him. That is when her mother took a job as a librarian and the family went to live with their grandmother, Sophie.

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Gertrude Käsebier

The remarkable life of Gertrude Käsebier, considered by many to be the greatest portrait photographer of her time.

Portrait by Adolf de Meyer circa 1900

She deferred her career that would bring her international fame until her three children were adolescents.  She entered the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York at the age of 37 to study portrait painting.  At the age of 45 she opened her own portrait studios and in just three years she was considered by some to be the greatest photographer in the United States.  Here is her remarkable story.

The Early Years

Gertrude Stanton was born on May 18, 1852 in Fort Des Moines, Iowa, later to be known simply as Des Moines.  Her parents were John W. Stanton and Muncy Boone Stanton. 

n 1858 the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush erupted and in 1859, Gertrude’s father moved to the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  He ventured by himself to Eureka Gulch to try his luck.  He realized that hunting for gold was a hit-and-miss proposition but providing lumber for the building boom that would surely develop was a sure thing.  He built a sawmill and was right.  A year later, John brought his family west to live with him.  The town of Eureka Gulch was renamed Golden and became the capital of the Colorado Territory.  John was well liked and was elected Golden’s first mayor.  Many of Gertrude’s playmates in Golden were American Indians and her contact with them resulted in a deep regard for them and would be the heart of some of the most beautiful and moving portraits.

In 1864 the effects of the Civil War were felt in the Colorado Territory and John thought that it had become too dangerous for his family, so they moved back to the East Coast and settled in Brooklyn, New York.  There John worked in mineralogy and Muncy rented out rooms in their home to boarders to earn a little extra money.  Gertrude was already showing an interest in art, even at an early age.  She removed some of their paintings from the wall, placed them flat on the floor and knelt next to them, pouring over them, examining every detail with the intent of understanding how she could to that.

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Edward Steichen

A brief biography of Edward Steichen, one of the most influential pioneers of photography on whose shoulders we stand.

 

“It is rather amusing, this tendency of the wise to regard a print which has been locally manipulated as irrational photography – this tendency which finds an esthetic tone of expression in the word faked. A MANIPULATED print may be not a photograph. The personal intervention between the action of the light and the print itself may be a blemish on the purity of photography. But, whether this intervention consists merely of marking, shading and tinting in a direct print, or of stippling, painting and scratching on the negative, or of using glycerine, brush and mop on a print, faking has set in, and the results must always depend upon the photographer, upon his personality, his technical ability and his feeling. BUT long before this stage of conscious manipulation has been begun, faking has already set in. In the very beginning, when the operator controls and regulates his time of exposure, when in dark-room the developer is mixed for detail, breadth, flatness or contrast, faking has been resorted to. In fact, every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible. When all is said, it still remains entirely a matter of degree and ability.” – Edward Steichen

In Luxembourg, a small country wedged between Germany, Belgium and France, is the little known Clervaux Castle secluded in the north of the country. It was built in the 12th century but destroyed in the Battle of the Bulge in the Second World War. Since then it has been restored and now houses the town’s administrative offices and a small museum.

The museum contains an exhibition of over 500 photographs collected from photographers in 36 countries that were assembled and first shown in 1955 at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Since its first showing, the exhibition has traveled around the world and has been seen by more than 9 million people. Finally, it was donated to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and reached its permanent home in the Castle.

00070138-01Éduard Jean Steichen was born on March 27, 1879 to Jean-Pierre and Marie Kemp Steichen in Bivange, Luxembourg. He was still a toddler when his parents moved to the United States and settled in Hancock located in Michigan’s upper peninsula where his father worked in the copper mines. When his father became incapacitated, they moved to Milwaukee. There his mother supported the family by working as a milliner.

He attended Pio Nono College, a Catholic boys’ high school when he was 15 and was already showing artistic talent in his drawings. But before finishing high school, he dropped out to become a lithography apprentice at the American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. He continued drawing and took up painting. In 1895 at the age of 16 he bought his first camera, a secondhand Kodak box “detective” camera. Together with several of his friends who also enjoyed photography, they pooled their money to rent a small room in a Milwaukee office building and formed the Milwaukee Art Students League.

Steichen continued drawing and painting, but he also took to photography for which he obviously had an eye. The first showing of his photographs, at the age of 20, was at the Philadelphia Photographic Salon in 1899. In 1900 Steichen exhibited his photographs in the Chicago Salon. It is there that Clarence H. White, one of the leading proponents of Pictorialist photography and a colleague of the legendary Alfred Stieglitz, saw his photographs and was greatly impressed. He decided he had to introduce Steichen to the Stieglitz in New York, the photographer whose lifelong obsession was to establish photography as a legitimate art and the driving force behind the Pictorialist movement in America. White wrote a letter to Stieglitz, telling him of his find. Stieglitz was interested.

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Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz left a lasting legacy on fine art photography. Read a brief history of his life and accomplishments.

“It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly, as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes ‘art’ in time.”

– Alfred Stieglitz

New Year’s Day in 1864 didn’t seem at first to be any more unusual than the start of any new year in recent years. It might have been thought to be special because it was leap year. But the Civil War was going full throttle and the United States was split asunder.

In Hoboken, New Jersey a boy was born to German Jewish immigrants Edward Stieglitz, a lieutenant in the Union Army, and his wife Hedwig Ann Werner. The baby boy was the firstborn to Edward and Hedwig and would be followed by five more siblings.

The child was given the name Alfred. There was no way in predicting in those early years that little Alfred would make the name Stieglitz synonymous with the most revered and influential photographer in America.

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