Edward Steichen 1879-1973

flush-mounted, inscribed 'guide print for Compo --500' by the photographer and titled in an unidentified hand in pencil, the photographer's '50 West 40th Street, New York' studio/copyright stamp, and a 'Photography Annual, Photography Roto Page' stamp on the reverse, matted, framed, a Howard Greenberg Gallery label on the reverse, circa 1921 

Joanna Steichen, the photographer's widow

Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York 

Acquired by the present collection from the above, 2002

Other prints of this image: 

Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography, (New York, 1963), pl. 64

Steichen the Photographer (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961), p. 35  

Joanna Steichen, Steichen's Legacy: Photographs, 1895-1973 (New York, 2000), pl. 229

Therese Mulligan, Photography from 1839 to Today: George Eastman House (Köln, 2000), p. 542

Steichen’s Three Pears and an Apple resulted from an experiment the photographer undertook in 1921 in which he was concerned with capturing the three-dimensionality of his subjects.  Dispensing with direct sunlight, Steichen adventurously experimented with various atypical lighting set-ups.  Ultimately, he arranged his subjects in a tent made of blankets.  The dim light in the tent’s interior called for exposures lasting from six to thirty-six hours. The expansion and contraction of the camera and subject during these long exposures resulted in images that succeeded in capturing the subjects’ volume as well as form.  Steichen notes, in A Life in Photography, that this effect was heightened when these images were enlarged to four by five feet.  Steichen’s annotations, ‘guide print for Compo,’ on the reverse of the print offered here, indicate that it was of sufficient high quality to be used as a reference for such an enlargement.  Compo Photo Services was a commercial lab that Steichen frequently used to make large exhibition prints while director of the photography department at The Museum of Modern Art.