Steichen’s Fashion Photography At Florida Museum

Edward Steichen is currently receiving A-list attention at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where an exhibition is featuring the photographer’s fashion portraits. “Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937,” draws upon an archive of 2,000 prints, beginning with the life-changing year the publishing house took the Paris-based Steichen on to French up Vogue and Vanity Fair. He ended up photographing more than a thousand celebrities for the latter, including Adele and Fred Astaire, Follies actress Mary Eaton, silent film star Gloria Swanson, and Steichen’s personal favorite model, Marion Morehouse. But beyond the beautiful women, the highest paid photographer of his time also captured images of statesmen and comedians, turning the magazines he shot for into printable museums. The late master, who died in 1973 at 93, once wrote to Vogue editor Edna Chase, “There are some works of art in the Louvre that if presented in a peep show would be condemned as pornographic. In the Louvre they are art. Make Vogue a Louvre.”