The Big Three

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand
Masterworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Malcolm Daniel
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Yale University Press (2010)

This is the companion publication to the current exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand runs through April 10, 2011). The book contains all of the plates from the exhibit and a well written essay by Malcolm Daniel, curator in charge of photographs for the museum.
While this book is beautifully printed with high quality image reproductions, it confirms for me the most resonating aspect of the exhibit, and that is the pictorial nature of Steichen's work. The work of Stieglitz and Strand can for the most part be fully appreciated in a high quality book. It is always best to see an actual print on the wall, but I don't believe the difference in visual appreciation is anywhere near as great for Stieglitz and Strand as it is for Steichen. I had never seen actual prints of Steichen's work before I went to this exhibit, and they blew me away. It was as if I was seeing his work for the very first time, and yet I had seen it in books many times.

The images involving Rodin are remarkable. Steichen visited Rodin's studio every weekend for a year before he asked to take portraits of the artist. The images Steichen made of Rodin's Balzac sculpture in the moonlight, using exposure times ranging from fifteen minutes to one hour are superb beyond words, and the image Rodin, Le Penseur is as close to a renaissance painting as a photograph can get.


Edward Steichen. Rodin,Le Penseur.(1902)


There are three versions of The Flatiron Building in the exhibit, hung side by side in a commanding display. They are each slightly different in color toning, and were printed in 1904, 1905, and 1909. Again, I have seen this image in books dozens of times, but realize now that I have never truly seen it.

Edward Steichen.The Flatiron Building, (1905)

The works in this exhibit are all from the Met’s own collection, which began with a gift of photographs from Stieglitz in 1928. Stieglitz considered the acceptance of his gift by the museum’s board of trustees to be nothing short of miraculous in opening “its sacred halls to Photography”, and this exhibit provides a look at the building blocks of photography’s now accepted place among traditional fine art institutions. Masterpieces from each photographer are shown in separate galleries, with works spanning from Stieglitz’s 1893 Winter, Fifth Avenue to a portrait of Stieglitz taken by Strand in 1939. The exhibit clearly separates the distinct style and professional careers of each photographer, and at the same time tells the interwoven story that connects them.

Another recent Amazon purchase, an ex-library book for a couple dollars. It's a bit worn and dirty on the outside, but the interior is perfect and the print quality is incredible in this series from Aperture published in 1978. I own a few issues from the 1990's Aperture series Masters of Photography, but this Steichen book is from a 1970's series Aperture did called The History of Photography. There are 15 books in the series, and this is number 9.

I bought this as part of a personal exploration I am doing after seeing the Stieglitz Steichen Strand exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few weeks ago. I've never really paid close attention to Steichen's work, but it left the strongest impact on me after seeing the exhibit and I have started reading as much as I can about him and look very closely at his images.

Like Breath on Glass
Whistler, Innes, and Art of Painting Softly



Here is an exhibit in New England I would like to see for two reasons. Primarily because it is being shown in the Stone Hill Center, a new addition at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. The Stone Hill Center was designed by Tadao Ando, the revered Japanese master of meditative spaces and harmonious designs that incorporate primarily underground space that greatly reduces the impact on the visual landscape. There is a second phase to this expansion that will include an even larger building and a reflecting pool. I've never had the privilege of experiencing an Ando building first hand, and this is reason alone to visit this exhibit in my opinion.

Second is the tie in this show has to photography history and the crossroad collisions that occurred among photographers and painters in the late 19th century as photography began to assert itself as an art medium. For the most part, it was photographers who mimicked painters, the Pictorialists such as Henry Peach Robinson, who emulated painting in their work, much to the chagrin of Straight photographers such as Berenice Abbott and Walker Evans.

This exhibit is a display of blurrily luminous scenes which give the impression of under or over-exposed and poorly focused photographs....leading to the question....were these painters influenced by Pictorialist photographers? The show even includes several landscapes painted by a young Edward Steichen. The painting shown above, Across the Salt Marshes, Huntington, is from 1905, the same year Steichen helped create Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession with Alfred Stieglitz,a gallery that helped bring art photography, primarily that in the Pictorialist style, to the same level of appreciation in America as painting and sculpture.

New York Times Exhibit Review

Edward Steichen

Tadao Ando