Edward Steichen Quotes

• Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Explaining, Major, Force, Photography, Man

• Photography was conceived as a mirror of the universal elements and emotions of the everydayness of life as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

• When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don’t give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Interested, Photography

• The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Artist, Photography

• There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is man himself. If we hadn’t had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn’t be here. We have survived it on our optimism.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Optimist, Magnificent, Optimism

• No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Photographer, Camera

• The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Photography, Mission

• Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Photography, Feeling, Human, Face

• Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Commence, Things

• A good daguerreotype was as perfect a kind of photograph as was ever made.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Photograph

• Every ten years a man should give himself a good kick in the pants.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Man

• When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Worth, Consideration

• I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Nature

• Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

  Edward Steichen

  Topics in Art

Edward Steichen (14)

Birth:	27th March, 1879
Death:	25th March, 1973
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Painter, Photographer

About

Edward Jean Steichen was born in Bivange, Luxembourg. He was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. He was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. From 1923 to 1938, he was a photographer for the Condé Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair while also working for many advertising agencies including J. Walter Thompson. In 1944, he directed the war documentary The Fighting Lady, which won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

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