Edward Steichen lived between 1879 and 1973. With the help of Alfred Stieglitz they produced Camera Work and the 291 Gallery. This gallery helped to introduce European art to New York with exhibitions of Rodin, Matisse, Cezanne, Picasso and Brancusi. Steichen was a well known curator and is best known for the 1955 touring exhibition The Family of Man. Steichen was an accomplished artist, but more importantly a great fashion photographer, being the chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair between 1923 and 1938. In his early days as a photographer, Steichen was very much a pictorialist. His The Pond - Moonlight (1904) and Flatiron (1904) are the best known of his early pictorialist photographs.

The Flatiron (1904)

Gloria Swanson (1924)

Steichen brought the pictorialist style to fashion photography, typically with soft-focus and aesthetically retouched. His Art et Décoration photographs are generally recognised to be the first attempt at serious fashion photography. After the First World War Steichen gradually reverted to straight photography

The Pond - Moonlight (1904)

Loretta-Young (1931)