Edward Steichen

Edward Steichen (1879–1973) was a Luxembourg‑born American photographer, painter, and curator whose portrait work for Vogue and Vanity Fair defined modern fashion and celebrity imagery. After moving from Paris to New York in 1923, Steichen corrected a Vanity Fair report that he had abandoned photography—and was promptly invited by Condé Nast to become the magazine’s chief photographer. From 1923 to 1938 his elegantly lit, painterly portraits of actors, writers, musicians, scientists, athletes, and society “It Girls” appeared alongside his work in Vogue, setting a new standard for editorial portraiture.

In the late 1930s Steichen turned increasingly toward exhibition-making and public service. During World War II he led the U.S. Navy’s photographic unit, then in 1947 he became director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. There he organized landmark shows—including the 1955 world tour of The Family of Man, a humanist exhibition seen by more than nine million visitors—that demonstrated photography’s power to unite audiences across cultures.

Steichen continued to experiment with color, scale, and abstraction in his own work while nurturing generations of photographers through his MoMA curatorship and teaching. His legacy endures in the way he bridged art, commerce, and social vision—elevating photography to a central role in both magazine culture and museum practice.