PAST EXHIBITION

Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937

January 16, 2009—May 3, 2009

An exhibition of 175 works by Edward Steichen drawn largely from the Condé Nast archives, this is the first presentation to give serious consideration to the full range of Steichen's fashion images. Organized by the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis, in conjunction with the International Center of Photography, the exhibition will open at ICP after an extensive tour in Europe. Steichen's approach to fashion photography was formative and over the course of his career he changed public perceptions of the American woman. An architect of American Modernism and a Pictorialist, Steichen exhibited his fashion images alongside his art photographs. Steichen's crisp, detailed, high-key style revolutionized fashion photography, and his influence is felt in the field to this day—Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Bruce Weber are among his stylistic successors.

Edward Steichen: In High Fashion features the finest examples of his fashion and celebrity portraiture made for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Much of the exhibition is drawn from the Steichen Archive at Condé Nast, which contains more than two thousand original vintage prints. A select group of prints from the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester will be shown only at ICP. Some of the images in the exhibition are well-known, iconic images in various histories of photography. Never before, however, have more than a modest selection of these prints been exhibited or published. The exhibition will be accompanied by a book devoted to images from Steichen's Condé Nast years. The book's authors are William A. Ewing, Carol Squiers, and Nathalie Herschdorfer, co-curators of the exhibition along with Todd Brandow, and Tobia Bezzola. The exhibition is traveling to ICP after presentations in Paris, Zurich, Madrid, and Reggio Emilia, Italy.

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