Literature

“A photo must represent, partake, suggest or reflect the object photographed, but it is not a work of art because it does either or all of these, it must be alive and as a photograph have an existence of its own.”~ Edouard Steichen

 This is one of Steichen’s early masterpieces and one of his most important images. It also greatly impressed the hard-to-please Alfred Stieglitz who was keen to include it in his hugely important publication Camera Work. Originally trained as a painter, Steichen embraced the soft focus, atmospheric tenets of pictorialism with its dreamlike and mysterious moods. The image is alive and haunting. A nude female figure seated, one knee raised and leaning to the left with her right arm extended across her body slowly envelopes us. The subject's face is obscured as it is shrouded in shadow and we are completely seduced as we are brought into her world.