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87-559: Robert Frank (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) was a Swiss American photographer and documentary filmmaker . His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans , earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan , writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ ... ] it remains perhaps

174-598: A November 28, 1968 article in the Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film with professional lighting. In 1960, Frank was staying in Pop artist George Segal 's basement while filming The Sin of Jesus with a grant from Walter K. Gutman. Isaac Babel 's story was transformed to center on a woman working on a chicken farm in New Jersey . It

261-536: A Swiss passport, while his father, Hermann originating from Frankfurt, Germany had become stateless after losing his German citizenship as a Jew. They had to apply for the Swiss citizenship of Robert and his older brother, Manfred. Though Frank and his family remained safe in Switzerland during World War II, the threat of Nazism nonetheless affected his understanding of oppression. He turned to photography, in part as

348-656: A clear contrast to those of most contemporary American photojournalists, as did his use of unusual focus, low lighting and cropping that deviated from accepted photographic techniques. This divergence from contemporary photographic standards gave Frank difficulty at first in securing an American publisher. Les Américains was first published in 1958 by Robert Delpire in Paris, as part of its Encyclopédie Essentielle series, with texts by Simone de Beauvoir , Erskine Caldwell , William Faulkner , Henry Miller and John Steinbeck that Delpire positioned opposite Frank's photographs. It

435-529: A four-year lithography apprenticeship with the American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. After hours, he would sketch and draw, and he began to teach himself painting. Having discovered a camera shop near his work, he visited frequently until he persuaded himself to buy his first camera, a secondhand Kodak box "detective" camera, in 1895. Steichen and his friends who were also interested in drawing and photography pooled their funds, rented

522-761: A guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jason Eskenazi asked other noted photographers visiting the Looking In exhibition to choose their favorite image from The Americans and explain their choice, resulting in the book, By the Glow of the Jukebox: The Americans List . By the time The Americans was published in the United States in 1959, Frank had moved away from photography to concentrate on filmmaking. Among his films

609-552: A letter from the Guggenheim Foundation. They really were primitive." He was told by the sheriff, "Well, we have to get somebody who speaks Yiddish." ... "They wanted to make a thing out of it. It was the only time it happened on the trip. They put me in jail. It was scary. Nobody knew where I was." Elsewhere in the South , he was told by a sheriff that he had "an hour to leave town." Those incidents may have contributed to

696-503: A life-long friendship and partnership between her brother and Sandburg. By 1889, when Éduard was 10, his parents had saved up enough money to move the family to Milwaukee . There he learned German and English at school, while continuing to speak Luxembourgish at home. In 1894, at fifteen, Steichen began attending Pio Nono College , a Catholic boys' high school , where his artistic talents were noticed. His drawings in particular were said to show promise. He quit high school to begin

783-554: A marketable idealisation of the garment, beyond the exact description of fabrics and buttonholes. After World War I , during which he commanded the photographic division of the American Expeditionary Forces , he gradually reverted to straight photography . In the early 1920s, Steichen famously took over 1000 photographs of a single cup and saucer, on "a graduated scale of tones from pure white through light and dark greys to black velvet," which he compared to

870-496: A means to escape the confines of his business-oriented family and home, and trained under a few photographers and graphic designers before he created his first hand-made book of photographs, 40 Fotos , in 1946. Frank emigrated to the United States in 1947, and secured a job in New York City as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar . In 1949, the new editor of Camera magazine, Walter Laubli (1902–1991), published

957-504: A minimum. He worked with Robert Frank even before his The Americans was published, exhibited the early work of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind , and purchased two prints by Robert Rauschenberg in 1952, ahead of any museum. Steichen also kept international developments in his scope and held shows and made important acquisitions from Europe and Latin America, occasionally visiting those countries to do so. Three books were published by

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1044-596: A perspective that became evident in his later photography. Frank's own dissatisfaction with the control that editors exercised over his work also undoubtedly colored his experience. He continued to travel, moving his family briefly to Paris. In 1953, he returned to New York and continued to work as a freelance photojournalist for magazines including McCall's , Vogue , and Fortune . Associating with other contemporary photographers such as Saul Leiter and Diane Arbus , he helped form what Jane Livingston has termed The New York School of photographers (not to be confused with

1131-589: A photo book, was a model for Frank's Les Américains (' The Americans ') published ten years later in Paris by Delpire, in 1958. He soon left to travel in South America and Europe. He created another hand-made book of photographs that he shot in Peru, and returned to the U.S. in 1950. That year was momentous for Frank, who, after meeting Edward Steichen , participated in the group show 51 American Photographers at

1218-466: A pioneer of fashion photography , Steichen's gown images for the magazine Art et Décoration in 1911 were the first modern fashion photographs to be published. From 1923 to 1938, Steichen served as chief photographer for the Condé Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair , while also working for many advertising agencies, including J. Walter Thompson . During these years, Steichen was regarded as

1305-467: A print of Steichen's early pictorialist photograph, The Pond–Moonlight (1904), sold for what was then the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction , US$ 2.9 million . Steichen took the photograph in Mamaroneck, New York , near the home of his friend, art critic Charles Caffin . It shows a wooded area and pond, with moonlight appearing between the trees and reflecting on the pond. While

1392-585: A seminal work in American photography and art history , and is the work with which Frank is most clearly identified. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said "it is impossible to imagine photography's recent past and overwhelmingly confusing present without his lingeringly pervasive presence." and that The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ . . . ] it remains perhaps

1479-710: A small house in the village of Bivange , Luxembourg , the son of Jean-Pierre and Marie Kemp Steichen. His parents facing increasingly straitened circumstances and financial difficulties, decided to make a new start and emigrated to the United States when Steichen was eighteen months old. Jean-Pierre Steichen immigrated in 1880, with Marie Steichen bringing the infant Éduard along after Jean-Pierre had settled in Hancock in Michigan 's Upper Peninsula copper country. According to noted Steichen biographer, Penelope Niven ,

1566-537: A small room in a Milwaukee, WI office building, and began calling themselves the Milwaukee Art Students League. The group hired Richard Lorenz and Robert Schade for occasional lectures. In 1899, Steichen's photographs were exhibited in the second Philadelphia Photographic Salon. Steichen became a U.S. citizen in 1900 and signed the naturalization papers as Edward J. Steichen , but he continued to use his birth name of Éduard until after

1653-406: A substantial portfolio of Jakob Tuggener pictures made at upper-class entertainments and in factories, alongside the work of the 25 year-old Frank who had just returned to his native Switzerland after two years abroad, with pages including some of his first pictures from New York. The magazine promoted the two as representatives of the 'new photography' of Switzerland. Tuggener was a role model for

1740-691: A voluntary capacity as Curator of the Edward Steichen Archive until the mid-1980s to source materials by, about, and related to Steichen. Her detailed card catalogs are housed in the Museum's Grace M. Mayer Papers. Steichen's 90th birthday was marked with a dinner gathering of photographers, editors, writers, and museum professionals at the Plaza Hotel in 1969. The event was hosted by MoMA trustee Henry Allen Moe, and U.S. Camera magazine publisher Tom Maloney. In 1970, an evening show

1827-843: A woman kissing her swaddled babe-in-arms); of a bowed old woman in Peru; a rheumy-eyed miner in Wales; and the others in England and the US, including two (one atypically soft-focus) of his wife in pregnancy; and one (later to be included in The Americans ) of six laughing women in the window of the White Tower Hamburger Stand on Fourteenth Street, New York City. Inspired by fellow Swiss Jakob Tuggener 's 1943 filmic book Fabrik, Bill Brandt 's The English at Home (1936), and Walker Evans 's American Photographs (1938), and on

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1914-556: A world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition that, while arguably a product of American Cold War propaganda, was seen by 9 million visitors and still holds the record for most-visited photography exhibit. Now permanently housed and on continuous display in Clervaux (Luxembourgish: Klierf) Castle in northern Luxembourg , his country of birth, Steichen regarded the exhibition as the "culmination of his career.". Comprising over 500 photos that depicted life, love and death in 68 countries,

2001-506: Is now the territory of the United States was Theobald (Diebold) von Erlach (1541–1565). The history of the Amish church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann , a native of Erlenbach im Simmental . During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a flow of Swiss farmers formed colonies, particularly in Russia and

2088-456: The 17th Academy Awards . In 1942, Steichen curated for the Museum of Modern Art the exhibition Road to Victory, five duplicates of which toured the world. Photographs in the exhibition were credited to enlisted members of the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps and numbers by Steichen's unit, while many were anonymous and some were made by automatic cameras in Navy planes operated while firing at

2175-691: The First World War . In April 1900, Steichen left Milwaukee for Paris to study art. Clarence H. White thought Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz should meet, and thus produced an introduction letter for Steichen, and Steichen—then en route to Paris from his home in Milwaukee—met Stieglitz in New York City in early 1900. In that first meeting, Stieglitz expressed praise for Steichen's background in painting and bought three of Steichen's photographic prints. In 1902, when Stieglitz

2262-464: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); he also married fellow artist Mary Frank (née Lockspeiser), with whom he had two children, Andrea and Pablo. Though he was initially optimistic about the United States' society and culture, Frank's perspective quickly changed as he confronted the fast pace of American life and what he saw as an overemphasis on money. He now saw America as an often bleak and lonely place,

2349-619: The Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson . Though then 88 years old and unable to attend in person, in 1967 Steichen, as a still-active member of the copyright committee of the American Society of Magazine Photographers , wrote a submission to the U.S. Senate hearings to support copyright law revisions, requesting that "this young giant among the visual arts be given equal rights by having its peculiar problems taken into account." In 1968,

2436-646: The genre goes to the French Baron Adolph de Meyer and to Steichen who, borrowing his friend's hand-camera in 1907, candidly photographed dazzlingly-dressed ladies at the Longchamp Racecourse Fashion then was being photographed for newspaper supplements and fashion magazines, particularly by the Frères Séeberger , as it was worn at Paris horse-race meetings by aristocracy and hired models. In 1911, Lucien Vogel,

2523-406: The 1970s, publishing his second photographic book, The Lines of My Hand , in 1972. This work has been described as a "visual autobiography", and consists largely of personal photographs. However, he largely gave up "straight" photography to instead create narratives out of constructed images and collages , incorporating words and multiple frames of images that were directly scratched and distorted on

2610-583: The 1984 Democratic National Convention , and directing music videos for artists such as New Order ("Run"), and Patti Smith (" Summer Cannibals "). Frank produced both films and still images, and helped organize several retrospectives of his art. His work has been represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York since 1984. In 1994, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. presented

2697-729: The 2000 United States Census the highest percentage of Swiss Americans in any town, village or other, are the following: only cities, towns and villages with at least 500 people included According to the 2000 United States Census the states with the highest percentage of people of Swiss ancestry are the following: Edward Steichen Steichen was credited with transforming photography into an art form. His photographs appeared in Alfred Stieglitz 's groundbreaking magazine Camera Work more often than anyone else during its publication run from 1903 to 1917. Stieglitz hailed him as "the greatest photographer that ever lived". As

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2784-615: The American Civil War than in any other foreign conflict except the Battle of Marignano in 1515 and Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812 ." Swiss immigration diminished after 1930 because of the depression and World War II , but 23,700 more Swiss had arrived by 1960, followed by 29,100 more between 1961 and 1990, many of whom were professionals or employees in American branches of Swiss companies who later returned to Switzerland. The 2000 Census included seven communities in

2871-527: The Andrea Frank Foundation, which provides grants to artists. After his move to Nova Scotia, Canada, Frank divided his time between his home there, in a former fisherman's shack on the coast, and his Bleecker Street loft in New York. He acquired a reputation for being a recluse (particularly since the death of Andrea), declining most interviews and public appearances. He continued to accept eclectic assignments, however, such as photographing

2958-781: The Department during his tenure ( The Family of Man , Steichen the Photographer , and The Bitter Years: 1935–1941: Rural America as Seen by the Photographers of the Farm Security Administration ). Despite his solid career in photography, Steichen displayed his own work at MoMA—his retrospective, Steichen the Photographer —only after he had already announced his retirement in 1961. Among accomplishments that were to redeem initial resentment at his appointment, Steichen created The Family of Man ,

3045-607: The Department of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art . While there, he curated and assembled exhibits including the touring exhibition The Family of Man , which was seen by nine million people. In 2003, the Family of Man photographic collection was added to UNESCO 's Memory of the World Register in recognition of its historical value. In February 2006, a print of Steichen's early pictorialist photograph, The Pond–Moonlight (1904), sold for US$ 2.9 million—at

3132-616: The Edward Steichen Archive was established in MoMA's Department of Photography. The Museum's then-Director René d'Harnoncourt declared that its function was to "amplify and clarify the meaning of Steichen's contribution to the art of photography, and to modern art generally." Creator of the Archive was Grace M. Mayer, who in 1959 started her career as an assistant to the director, Steichen, and who became Curator of Photography in 1962, retiring in 1968. Mayer returned after her retirement to serve in

3219-780: The Heimat (Homeland). The William Tell Verein of Oakland and the Helvetia Verein of Sacramento, founded in the 1890s, were examples of clubs formed during this period. Much later, the West Coast Swiss Wrestling Association was established to preserve the Swiss tradition of Schwingen (Swiss wrestling) on the Pacific coast of the United States. Of Swiss immigrant involvement in the Civil War , David Vogelsanger writes, "More Swiss participated in

3306-549: The New York School of art) during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1955, Frank achieved further recognition with the inclusion by Edward Steichen of seven of his photographs (many more than most other contributors) in the world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man that was to be seen by 9 million visitors and with a popular catalogue that is still in print. Frank's contributions had been taken in Spain (of

3393-445: The Pacific , and precipitating curator Newhall's resignation along with most of his staff, in 1947 Steichen was appointed Director of Photography until 1962, later assisted by Grace M. Mayer . His appointment was protested by many who saw him as anti-art photography, one of the most vocal being Ansel Adams who on April 29, 1946, wrote a letter to Stephen Clark (copied to Newhall) to express his disappointment over Steichen's hiring for

3480-562: The Photo-Secession , in what had been Steichen's portrait studio; it eventually became known as the 291 Gallery after its address. It presented some of the first American exhibitions of Auguste Rodin , Henri Matisse , Paul Cézanne , Pablo Picasso , and Constantin Brâncuși . According to author and art historian William A. Ewing, Steichen became one of the earliest " jet setters ", constantly moving back and forth between Europe and

3567-601: The Steichens were "part of a large exodus of Luxembourgers displaced in the late nineteenth century by worsening economic conditions." Éduard's sister and only sibling, Lilian Steichen , was born in Hancock on May 1, 1883. She would later marry poet Carl Sandburg , whom she met at the Milwaukee Social Democratic Party office in 1907. Her marriage to Sandburg the following year helped forge

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3654-677: The Stones as those who hired the artist owned the copyright . A court order restricted the film to being shown no more than five times per year, and only in the presence of Frank. Frank's photography also appeared on the cover of the Rolling Stones' album Exile on Main St. . Other films by Frank include Me and My Brother , Keep Busy , and Candy Mountain (the last was co-directed with Rudy Wurlitzer ). Though Frank continued to be interested in film and video, he returned to still images in

3741-501: The U.S. by steamship, in the process cross-pollinating art from Europe to the United States, helping to define photography as an art form, and at the same time widening America's understanding of European art and art in general. Fashion photography began with engravings reproduced from photographs of modishly-dressed actresses by Leopold-Emile Reutlinger , Nadar and others in the 1890s. After high-quality half-tone reproduction of photographs became possible, most credit as pioneers of

3828-473: The United States as 80,218 in 2015. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 26,896 individuals born in Switzerland declared that they were of Swiss ancestry in 2015, 3,047 individuals born in Switzerland declared that they were of German ancestry in 2015, 1,255 individuals born in Switzerland declared that they were of French ancestry in 2015, and 2,555 individuals born in Switzerland declared that they were of Italian ancestry in 2015. The first Swiss person in what

3915-552: The United States. Before the year 1820 some estimated 25,000 to 30,000 Swiss entered British North America . Most of them settled in regions of today's Pennsylvania as well as North and South Carolina . In the next years until 1860 about as many Swiss arrived, making their homes mainly in the Midwestern states such as Ohio , Indiana , Illinois and Wisconsin . Approximately 50,000 came between 1860 and 1880, some 82,000 between 1881 and 1890, and estimated 90,000 more during

4002-413: The a musician's finger exercises. He was hired by Condé Nast in 1923 for the extraordinary salary of $ 35,000 (equivalent to over $ 500,000 in 2019 value). At the commencement of World War II, Steichen, then in his sixties, had retired as a full-time photographer. He was developing new varieties of delphinium , which in 1936 had been the subject of his first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art , and

4089-423: The book. Also exhibited were three collages (made from more than 115 original rough work prints) that were assembled under Frank's supervision in 2007 and 2008, revealing his intended themes as well as his first rounds of image selection. An accompanying book, also titled Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans , was published, the most in-depth examination of any photography book ever, at 528 pages. While working as

4176-658: The community of Mabou, Nova Scotia in Cape Breton Island , Nova Scotia in Canada. In 1974, his daughter, Andrea, was killed in a plane crash in Tikal, Guatemala . Also around this time, his son, Pablo, was first hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia . Much of Frank's subsequent work dealt with the impact of the loss of both his daughter and subsequently his son, who died in an Allentown, Pennsylvania hospital in 1994. In 1995, in memory of his daughter he founded

4263-575: The dark view of America found in the work. Shortly after returning to New York in 1957, Frank met Beat writer Jack Kerouac "at a New York party where poets and Beatniks were," and showed him the photographs from his travels. However, according to Joyce Johnson , Kerouac's lover at the time, she met Frank while waiting for Kerouac to emerge from a conference with his editors, at Viking Press, looked at Frank's portfolio, and introduced them to each other. Kerouac immediately told Frank, "Sure I can write something about these pictures." He eventually contributed

4350-405: The design of The Family of Man, she worked two years on, as well as Diogenes with a Camera (II, III and IV), the exhibition of Brassaï's graffiti photographs, and the 1958 collection survey. Steichen hired John Szarkowski to be his successor at the Museum of Modern Art on July 1, 1962. On his appointment, Szarkowski promoted Mayer to Curator. On December 6, 1963, Steichen was presented with

4437-828: The enemy. This was followed in January 1945 by Power in the Pacific: Battle Photographs of our Navy in Action on the Sea and In the Sky. Steichen was released from Active Duty (under honorable conditions) on December 13, 1945, at the rank of Captain . For his service during World War II , he was awarded the World War II Victory Medal , Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (with 2 campaign stars), American Campaign Medal , and numerous other awards. In

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4524-444: The fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of The Americans , a new edition was released worldwide on May 30, 2008. For this new edition from Steidl , most photographs are uncropped (in contrast to the cropped versions in previous editions), and two photographs are replaced with those of the same subject but from an alternate perspective. A celebratory exhibit of The Americans , titled Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans ,

4611-428: The first serious fashion photographs ever made," a generalised claim since repeated by many commentators. What he (and de Meyer) did bring was an artistic approach; a soft-focus, aesthetically retouched Pictorialist style that was distinct from the mechanically sharp images made by his commercial colleagues for half-tone reproduction, and that he and the publishers and fashion designers for whom he worked appreciated as

4698-466: The formation of the Amish community. In the 19th century, there was substantial immigration of Swiss farmers, who preferred rural settlements in the Midwest . Swiss immigration diminished after 1930, although limited immigration continues. The number of Americans of Swiss descent is nearly one million. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs reported the permanent residency of Swiss nationals in

4785-667: The industry (sometimes irreverently called "Steichen's chickens"), including photographers Wayne Miller and Charles Fenno Jacobs . A collection of 172 silver gelatin photographs taken by the Unit under his leadership is held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin . Their war documentary The Fighting Lady , directed by Steichen, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at

4872-505: The introduction to the U.S. edition of The Americans . Frank also became lifelong friends with Allen Ginsberg , and was one of the main visual artists to document the Beat subculture, which felt an affinity with Frank's interest in documenting the tensions between the optimism of the 1950s and the realities of class and racial differences. The irony that Frank found in the gloss of American culture and wealth over this tension gave his photographs

4959-572: The lifestyle and political institutions of the United States were compliant with those of their homeland most Swiss had no problems starting a new life in their part of the New World and became attached to both countries. Along with the Swiss Immigrants came their traditions. By the late 1800s sufficient numbers of Swiss had arrived that Swiss Vereins (Clubs) were established to provide camaraderie and sharing of customs and traditions of

5046-530: The most comprehensive retrospective of Frank's work to date, entitled Moving Out . Frank died on September 9, 2019, at his home in Nova Scotia. Swiss Americans Swiss Americans are Americans of Swiss descent. Swiss emigration to America predates the formation of the United States, notably in connection with the persecution of Anabaptism during the Swiss Reformation and

5133-504: The most influential photography book of the 20th century." In 1961, Frank received his first individual show, entitled Robert Frank: Photographer , at the Art Institute of Chicago . He also showed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1962. The French Journal Les Cahiers de la photographie devoted special issues 11 and 12 in 1983 to discussion of Robert Frank as a gesture of admiration for, and complicity with, his work, also to set forth his critical capacity as an artist. To mark

5220-448: The most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage. Frank was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the son of Rosa (Zucker) and Hermann Frank. His family was Jewish . Robert states in Gerald Fox's 2004 documentary Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank that his mother, Rosa (other sources state her name as Regina), had

5307-436: The most popular and highest-paid photographer in the world. After the United States' entry into World War II , Steichen was invited by the United States Navy to serve as Director of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit . In 1944, he directed the war documentary The Fighting Lady , which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 17th Academy Awards . From 1947 to 1961, Steichen served as Director of

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5394-468: The museum staff designer since 1955. Then Mayer organized Steichens only solo-show during his time at the museum, Steichen the Photographer, (28 Mar–30 May 1961), Diogenes with a Camera V (26 Sep–12 Nov 1961), 50 Photographs by 50 Photographers, a third survey of the museum's collection (3 Apr–15 May 1962), and a series of four installations called A Bid for Space (1960 to 1963), which were designed by Kathleen Haven. Haven had also been responsible for

5481-417: The museum's archive, with press releases, checklists of the exhibited photographs, and installation views.) In the latter years of his tenure after her appointment by Steichen as Assistant Curator, it was Grace M. Mayer from the Museum of the City of New York , where she had organized about 150 exhibitions, who curated the shows The Sense of Abstraction (17 Feb–10 Apr 1960), co-directed by Kathleen Haven,

5568-517: The negatives. None of this later work has achieved an impact comparable to that of The Americans. As some critics have pointed out, this is perhaps because Frank began playing with constructed images more than a decade after Robert Rauschenberg introduced his silkscreen composites—in contrast to The Americans , Frank's later images simply were not beyond the pale of accepted technique and practice by that time. Frank and Mary separated in 1969. He remarried, to sculptor June Leaf , and in 1971, moved to

5655-467: The new position of director; "To supplant Beaumont Newhall, who has made such a great contribution to the art through his vast knowledge and sympathy for the medium, with a regime which is inevitably favorable to the spectacular and 'popular' is indeed a body blow to the progress of creative photography." Nevertheless, Ansel Adams' image Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico was first published in U.S. Camera Annual 1943 , after being selected by Steichen, who

5742-554: The next three decades. In spite of Swiss settlements like Highland (Illinois), New Glarus (Wisconsin), New Bern (North Carolina), Gruetli ( Tennessee ) and Bernstadt ( Kentucky ) were emerging fast, most Swiss preferred rural villages of the Midwest and the Pacific Coast where especially the Italian Swiss were taking part in California's winegrowing culture , or then took up residence in more industrial and urban regions such as New York City , Philadelphia , Pittsburgh , Chicago, St. Louis , Denver or San Francisco . As

5829-415: The next two years, during which time he took 28,000 shots. 83 of these were selected by him for publication in The Americans . Frank's journey was not without incident. He later recalled the anti-Semitism to which he was subject in a small Arkansas town. "I remember the guy [policeman] took me into the police station, and he sat there and put his feet on the table. It came out that I was Jewish because I had

5916-438: The only flower exhibition ever held there. When the United States joined the global conflict, Steichen, who had come out of the first World War an Army Colonel , was refused for active service because of his age. Later, invited by the Navy to serve as Director of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit , he was commissioned a Lieutenant-Commander in January 1942. Steichen selected for his unit six officer-photographers from

6003-480: The print appears to be a color photograph, the first true color photographic process, the autochrome process, was not available until 1907. Steichen created the impression of color by manually applying layers of light-sensitive gums to the paper. Only three prints of The Pond–Moonlight are still known to exist and, as a result of the hand-layering of the gums, each is unique. (The two prints not auctioned are held in museum collections.) The extraordinary sale price of

6090-487: The print is in part attributable to its one-of-a-kind character and to its rarity. A show of early color photographs by Steichen was held at the Mudam (Musée d'Art moderne) in Luxembourg City from July 14 to September 3, 2007. Steichen married Clara E. Smith (1875–1952) in 1903. They had two daughters, Mary Rose Steichen (1904-1998) and Charlotte "Kate" Rodina Steichen (1908-1988). In 1914, Clara accused her husband of having an affair with artist Marion H. Beckett , who

6177-402: The prologue for its widely purchased catalogue was written by Steichen's brother-in-law, Carl Sandburg . As had been Steichen's wish, the exhibition was donated to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , his country of birth. The following are exhibitions curated or directed by Steichen during his tenure as Director of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art. (References link to the exhibition page in

6264-606: The publisher of Jardin des Modes and La Gazette du Bon Ton , challenged Steichen to promote fashion as a fine art through photography . Steichen took photos of gowns designed by couturier Paul Poiret , which were published in the April 1911 issue of the magazine Art et Décoration. Two were in colour, and appeared next to flat, stylised, yellow-and-black Georges Lepape drawings of accessories, fabrics, and girls. Steichen himself, in his 1963 autobiography, asserted that his 1911 Art et Décoration photographs "were probably

6351-772: The recommendation of Evans (a previous recipient), Alexey Brodovitch , Alexander Leiberman , Edward Steichen, and Meyer Schapiro , Frank secured a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1955 to travel across the United States and photograph all strata of its society. Cities he visited included Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan ; Savannah, Georgia ; Miami Beach and St. Petersburg, Florida ; New Orleans , Louisiana; Houston , Texas; Los Angeles , California; Reno, Nevada ; Salt Lake City, Utah ; Butte, Montana ; and Chicago , Illinois. He took his family along with him for part of his series of road trips over

6438-399: The show. What I was photographing was a kind of boredom. It's so difficult being famous. It's a horrendous life. Everyone wants to get something from you." Mick Jagger reportedly told Frank, "It's a fucking good film, Robert, but if it shows in America we'll never be allowed in the country again." The Stones sued to prevent the film's release, and it was disputed whether Frank as the artist or

6525-465: The state of Wisconsin with sizable populations having Swiss ancestry. These communities are mostly concentrated in the southern border counties, namely Green , Lafayette , and Dane Counties . According to the 2000 United States Census, the 15 cities with the largest populations of Swiss Americans are as follows: According to the 2007 American Community Survey, the states with the largest populations of Swiss Americans are as follows: According to

6612-474: The summer of 1929, Museum of Modern Art director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. had included a department devoted to photography in a plan presented to the Trustees. Though not put in place until 1940, it became the first department of photography in a museum devoted to twentieth-century art and was headed by Beaumont Newhall . On the strength of attendances of his propaganda exhibitions Road to Victory and Power in

6699-401: The time, the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction. A print of another photograph of the same style, The Flatiron (1904), became the second most expensive photograph ever on November 8, 2022, when it was sold for $ 12,000,000, at Christie's New York – well above the original estimate of $ 2,000,000-$ 3,000,000. Steichen was born Éduard Jean Steichen on March 27, 1879, in

6786-415: The younger artist, first mentioned to him by Frank's boss and mentor, Zurich commercial photographer Michael Wolgensinger (1913–1990) who understood that Frank was unsuited to the more mercenary application of the medium. Tuggener, as a serious artist who had left the commercial world behind, was the "one Frank really did love, from among all Swiss photographers," according to Guido Magnaguagno and Fabrik , as

6873-916: Was displayed in 2009 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The second section of the four-section, 2009, SFMOMA exhibition displays Frank's original application to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (which funded the primary work on The Americans project), along with vintage contact sheets, letters to photographer Walker Evans and author Jack Kerouac, and two early manuscript versions of Kerouac's introduction to

6960-490: Was finally published in 1959 in the United States, without the texts, by Grove Press , where it initially received substantial criticism. Popular Photography , for one, derided his images as "meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness." Though sales were also poor at first, the fact that the introduction was by the popular Kerouac helped it reach a larger audience. Over time and through its inspiration of later artists, The Americans became

7047-551: Was formulating what would become Camera Work , he asked Steichen to design the logo for the magazine with a custom typeface . Steichen was the most frequently shown photographer in the journal. Steichen began experimenting with color photography in 1904 and was one of the earliest in the United States to use the Autochrome Lumière process. In 1905, Stieglitz and Steichen created the Little Galleries of

7134-419: Was open seasonally. "I consider Steichen a very great artist and the leading, the greatest photographer of the time. Before him, nothing conclusive had been achieved." Steichen's career, especially his activities at MoMA, did much to popularise and promote the medium, and both before and since his death photography, including his own, continued to appreciate as a collectible art form. In February 2006,

7221-466: Was originally supposed to be filmed in six weeks in and around New Brunswick , but Frank ended up shooting for six months. Frank's 1972 documentary of the Rolling Stones , Cocksucker Blues , is arguably his best known film. The film shows the Stones on tour, engaging in heavy drug use and group sex . Frank said of the Stones, "It was great to watch them — the excitement. But my job was after

7308-516: Was presented in Arles during The Rencontres d'Arles festival: Edward Steichen, photographe by Martin Boschet. Steichen bought a farm that he called Umpawaug in 1928, just outside West Redding, Connecticut . He lived there until his death on March 25, 1973, two days before his 94th birthday. After his death, Steichen's farm was made into a park, known as Topstone Park . As of 2018, Topstone Park

7395-409: Was serving as judge for the publication. This gave Moonrise an audience before its first formal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944. Steichen as director held a strong belief in the local product, of the "liveness of the melting pot of American photography," and worked to expand and organise the collection, inspiring and recognising the 1950s generation while keeping historical shows to

7482-712: Was staying with them in France. The Steichens left France just ahead of invading German troops. In 1915, Clara Steichen returned to France with her daughter Kate, staying in their house in the Marne in spite of the war. Steichen returned to France with the Photography Division of the American Army Signal Corps in 1917, whereupon Clara returned to the United States. In 1919, Clara Steichen sued Marion Beckett for having an affair with her husband, but

7569-404: Was the 1959 Pull My Daisy , which was written and narrated by Kerouac and starred Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and others from the Beat circle. The Beats emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Frank's co-director, Alfred Leslie , revealed in

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