Edward Steichen 1879-1973

(New York: Alfred Stiegltiz, 1906, an edition of 65), a volume containing introductory text by Maurice Maeterlinck; and 29 ‘selected proof copies’ of photogravures and other reproductions of the photographs of Edward Steichen, some plates tipped to double-mounts, each tipped or mounted to uncut handmade paper, tipped to a leaf of Japon vellum.  Tall folio, original quarter-vellum, gilt-lettered boards, numbered ‘Twenty (20)’ by Alfred Stieglitz and signed by both Stieglitz and Steichen in pencil on the colophon, number 20 from the edition of 65

Weston Naef, The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978), p. 470, item 764

Lucien Goldschmidt and Weston Naef, The Truthful Lens:  (New York: Grolier Club, 1980), catalogue 154

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Steichen the Photographer (1961), p. 77, item 28, number 4

Steichen, A Life in Photography (New York, 1963), facing pl. 13, and facing pl. 249, under ‘1906’

Lucy Bowditch, ‘Eduard Steichen and Maurice Maeterlinck: The Symbolist Connection,’ in History of Photography, Vol. 17, No. 4, Winter 1993, pp. 334-41

The plates are as follows:

I.  Rodin—Le Penseur
II.  George Frederick Watts
III.  Maurice Maeterlinck
IV.  Eleonore Duse
V.  J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.
VI.  Clarence H. White
VII.  William M. Chase
VIII.  Mr. and Mrs. Steichen
IX.  A. Batholome
X.  The White Lady
XI.  Lilac Buds---Mrs. S.
XII.  Solitude
XIII.  The Little Round Mirror
XIV.  In Memoriam
XV.  La Cigale
XVI.  The Little Model
XVII.  The Model and the Mask
XVIII.  Profile
XIX.  The Brass Bowl
XX.  Poster Lady
XXI.  Portrait---W. M. C.
XXII.  The Big White Cloud---Lake George
XXIII.  The Pond---Moonrise
XXIV.  Mother and Child---Sunlight
XXV.  The Flatiron
XXVI.  Experiment in Three-color Photography
XXVII.  Landscape in Two Colors
XXVIII.  Road to the Valley---Moonrise
XXIX.  Figure with Lens---Poster Design

Often referred to in the Steichen and Camera Work literature as the deluxe edition of the Steichen Supplement, the special Steichen collection published simultaneously with Camera Work Number 14, the scarce volume offered here comprises Steichen images from three separate Camera Work issues: not only the ten plates from Number 14 and the sixteen plates from the regular Steichen Supplement, but also three additional plates from other numbers: the Bartholome portrait from Camera Work Number 2 (1903); the portrait of Clarence White from Camera Work 9 (1905); and the Experiment in Three-Color Photography from Camera Work 15 (1906). 

An early advertisement for the Steichen Supplement in Camera Work 14 describes the planned volume as an ‘Edition de Luxe,’ limited to sixty-five signed and numbered copies, of which forty were intended for sale.   It states that the volume will contain

 ‘thirty specially selected proofs of Mr. Steichen’s work, mounted on special paper about 13 x 19 inches.  The book will be bound in a specially designed stiff board cover.  Price, thirty dollars.’

By 1908, as Camera Work 21 advertised, only twelve copies were still available:

‘The Steichen Book.  An [sic] unique piece of bookmaking, containing 26 plates.  Edition limited to 65 copies.  But 12 copies left of these; the first six can be had at $75 each, the others at $100 each.’

The volume was published without a title page, and has at times been called simply ‘Steichen,’ the name embossed in gilt on the front cover.   By 1908, however, as the wording of the advertisement from that year indicates, the volume was being referred to as ‘The Steichen Book.’  Although the advertisements mention varying numbers of plates, the book as published contained twenty-nine. The volume’s printed plate list calls for twenty-nine plates, all of which are present in the copy of the book offered here.  The copy owned by Stieglitz himself, an out-of-series, unnumbered copy, now in the Stieglitz Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA, 49.55.329), has the same printed list of twenty-nine plates, but is lacking the portrait of Clarence White.  (The Metropolitan’s Stieglitz copy, however, has an additional set of platinotypes of Steichen paintings bound in at the rear of the volume, not called for in the printed plate list.)  

As one of the most important members of the Photo-Secession, Edward Steichen was a likely candidate for such a deluxe publication of his work.  Over the years, Camera Work reproduced a total of sixty-eight works by Steichen, including not only photographs, but also paintings and graphic designs.  This was by far the largest contribution to the magazine by a single photographer, exceeding even the forty-seven plates after the photographs of Stieglitz himself.

Steichen was responsible for the look and type-face of a number of Photo-Secessionist publications.  Trained as a graphic designer in his early years in Milwaukee, Steichen created the famous and long-running cover of Camera Work, as well as the cover of the Pittsburgh Photo-Secession exhibition catalogue, 1904, and the Photo-Secession announcement of 1905.   It is assumed that he designed the cover of the present volume as well.  The statement by Maeterlinck that prefaces the volume was written originally for a 1903 issue of Camera Work;  as Bowditch points out, the Maeterlinck text, a favorite of Steichen, was published in Cahiers d’Aujourd’hui in 1912, and reprinted by the photographer himself in his autobiography, A Life in Photography.