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Edward Steichen
(1876-1973)
'THE BLACK CANYON'
oversized gum print, green-toned, signed and dated by the photographer in yellow crayon on the image, mounted to brown board, inscribed 'Steichen' in an unidentified hand in pencil on the reverse, 1906
19 by 15 1/8 in. 48.3 by 38.4 cm.
Provenance
Gift of Flora Stieglitz Straus, 1970
Exhibited
Photography Rediscovered, American Photographs, 1900-1930, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1979
Literature
Photography Rediscovered, cat. no. 142, p. 175
In 1906, after organizing a travelling exhibition of the Photo-Secession with Alfred Stieglitz and Joseph Keiley in New York, Steichen returned to Wisconsin with his wife and young daughter to spend the summer. Steichen had determined to move his family to France in the fall, but wanted to take a short trip into the American West before his departure. 'He had never seen that territory,' Penelope Niven writes, 'and he tried to no avail to persuade Stieglitz to join him. Everybody else was laughing at his determination to travel to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains, failing to understand his need to see the majestic landscapes of his own country before embarking again for Europe' (Steichen, New York: Clarkson Potter, p. 211). So, Steichen set out alone on an arduous three-week journey that took him through Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico. In Colorado, members of the Denver Camera Club helped Steichen explore the Rocky Mountains by car and horseback. One of his hosts, fellow Photo-Secessionist Harry C. Rubincam, made several photographs of Steichen in the mountains, including one of him on horseback (Naef, The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz, pls. 431-2).
Steichen found much to inspire his photography and painting on this trip. He wrote to Stieglitz that his trip was 'one of the greatest things I have experienced-not so much from a pictorial standpoint [as from] the bigger standpoint of life... I don't know which impressed me most-the prairie or the mountains-one bigger than the other-together forming a boundless whole... Somehow, since I have been west I almost regret going to Paris-or Europe. I tell you one builds up a big wholesome respect and appreciation for those early settlers-My God what men & women they must have been' (Steichen: The Master Prints, p. 90).
The print offered here, with its dramatic cloud-filled sky and strong vertical forms, is similar to several other landscapes that Steichen produced during this period. One of these images is 'Garden of the Gods,' made on the same trip, which shares with 'The Black Canyon' a series of rocky shapes that cut into the sky. With its vertical format, and central V-shaped wedge of sky, 'Horse Chestnut Trees, Long Island' (1905) offers an even closer compositional comparison.
While Steichen almost certainly made a number of photographs on this trip, 'The Garden of the Gods' and the photograph offered here appear to be the only surviving examples of his large-format prints of Western subjects. Possibly only two prints of 'The Garden of the Gods' exist, one in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The print of the The Black Canyon offered here is believed to be unique.
Flora Stieglitz Straus was Alfred Stieglitz's niece. In addition to Black Canyon, she donated one other Steichen photograph to the Museum in 1975: a portrait of her father, Leopold Stieglitz.