Edward Steichen 1879-1973

numbered in an unidentified hand in the negative, annotated 'Advert.' by the photographer and titled, dated, and numbered, possibly by Rolf Petersen, in pencil, and with the photographer's 'Photograph by Edward Steichen' stamp on the reverse, matted, framed, 1935

Collection of Jan Groover and Bruce Boice

Sotheby’s New York, 17 April 1991, Sale 6160, Lot 29

Christie's New York, 5 October 1995, Sale 8262, Lot 27

Acquired by the present collection from the above

This study of the model Dixie Ray was made by Steichen for Woodbury Soap, one of the more expensive brands of bar soap in the 1930s.   The present image relates directly to a published Steichen photograph from the Woodbury advertising campaign, that of a woman in a swim cap, or possibly shower cap, soaping her back.  The published photograph won Steichen a ‘Distinctive Merit’ award from the Art Directors’ Club of New York in 1937, in the ‘Mass Publications, Photographic Illustrations’ category.   It was exhibited, along with other prize-winning work from that year, in the Art Directors’ Club 1937 spring exhibition, and was published in the Club’s Sixteenth Annual of Advertising Art (New York, 1937, p. 50). 

In the published photograph, the model’s breast has been entirely obscured by the pose, and her hips and buttocks are shielded from the viewer by a box of advertising copy.  In the photograph offered here, a preliminary study, the hips and buttocks have been cropped only slightly by the edge of the frame, and there is a hint of breast in the shadows of the underarm.  Steichen, of course, in his role as one of the leading photographers of the Photo-Secession, had had much practice in photographing female nudes from the back or side, in poses seated, standing, and lying down.  Reproduced in Alfred Stieglitz’s haute-art periodical Camera Work, from1903 on, these beautiful and mysterious nudes carried such titles as Dawn Flowers, Dolor, and La Cigale.

As with his portrait studies, Steichen was able to shift effortlessly from art to commerce in photographing the female body.   In her provocative Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen’s Advertising Photography (Berkeley, 1997), to which this entry is indebted, Patricia Johnston discusses with insight Steichen’s campaigns for such products as Woodbury Soap and Cannon Towels, campaigns in which the nude figured prominently.   As Johnston points out, the female nude had long been used in advertising to sell everything from bathtubs to perfume, but Steichen’s work—with its impeccable ‘artistic’ reputation—elevated the genre to an art form (op.cit., especially pages 204-218).