Edward Steichen

title, date, and annotations 'Hollywood' and 'No. 7' in the negative, date and annotation 'V F Oct 1929' in pencil on the reverse

Image: 15⅛ by 19 in. (38.4 by 48.3 cm.)

Frame: 22¼ by 28¼ in. (55.9 by 71.8 cm.)

Collection of Joanna Steichen, the photographer's widow

Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above in 2000 by the present owner

Vanity Fair, October 1929, p. 62

LIFE, 10 January 1955, Vol. 38, No. 2, cover

Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography, (New York, 1963), pl. 125

Steichen the Photographer (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961), p. 49

Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1964), p. 187

Joanna Steichen, Steichen's Legacy: Photographs, 1895-1973 (New York, 2000), pl. 73

Todd Brandow and William A. Ewing, Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography (Minneapolis: Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and Musée de L'Elysée, Lausanne, 2007), pl. 139

Patricia Johnson, Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen's Advertising Photography (Berkeley, 1997), fig. 7.11, p. 182

This portrait of legendary screen siren Greta Garbo exemplifies Steichen’s expert use of light and shadow to render a dramatic studio portrait. Taken on the set of the 1928 film A Woman of Affairs, Steichen's photograph used simple props – a kitchen chair draped in a black focusing cloth – and bright arc lamps borrowed from filming to capture Garbo’s intensity. 

In his autobiography, A Life in Photography, Steichen gave a vivid recount of the sitting:

‘When Garbo came in to pose for the Vanity Fair photograph, I asked her to sit on the chair. She straddled it and used its back for resting her arms. I made five or six exposures, all more or less like her typical movie stills . . . but what bothered me most was her hair. It was curled and fluffy and hung down over her forehead. I said, “It’s too bad we’re doing this with that movie hairdo.” At that, she put her hands up to her forehead and pushed every strand back away from her face, saying, “Oh, this terrible hair.” At that moment, the woman came out, like the sun coming out from behind dark clouds. The full beauty of her magnificent face was revealed’ (unpaginated, Chapter 8). 

This portrait, one of Steichen’s signature images from the 1920s, was published in the October 1929 issue of Vanity Fair, with the caption, ‘Miss Garbo is beginning work on a talking film based on Eugene O’Neill’s famous Anna Christie.’ Garbo was already a silent film icon for her role in Flesh and the Devil (1927), and her leading role as a former prostitute in Anna Christie (1930) earned Garbo her first Academy Award nomination.