![]() He saw the plaster cast of Balzac and was much impressed, but too shy to approach the sculptor who happened to be present. On his arrival in Paris, Steichen visited the exhibition that Rodin had mounted on the Place de l’Alma. The young Steichen showed him his paintings and photos and was duly encouraged by the master. Already leader of the Pictorialists, he was also the future editor of the photography journal Camera Work, and founder and director of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession on Fifth Avenue. This success gave him the confidence he needed to go to Paris.īefore leaving for Europe in 1900, Steichen met the photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York. The following year, Steichen was accepted as one the participating photographers. White, Gertrude Käsebier and Fred Holland Day. The First Philadelphia Photographic Salon, held at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1898, included the works of Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence H. The multiple experimental techniques used to obtain different effects during the development process were among its notable characteristics. This international movement subscribed to the idea that photography was an artistic genre in its own right. ![]() These were then becoming increasingly popular due to the emergence of Pictorialism early in the decade. Having taught himself painting, he also devoted his energies to photography, feeding his passion for art by reading books on art history and photography magazines. Steichen began his professional career as a lithographer in Milwaukee, in 1898. It stirred up my interest in going to Paris, where artists of Rodin’s stature lived and worked.” (Steichen, A Life in Photography, 1963) “It was not just the statue of a man it was the very embodiment of a tribute to genius. Steichen (1879-1973), who was not yet one of Pictorialist photography’s foremost exponents, discovered Rodin’s Balzac on seeing the picture illustrating the article in his local paper. Paradoxically, it was because of this scandal that the American photographer Edward Steichen first heard about and eventually met the French sculptor. The international press got hold of the story about the controversy raging in the Parisian art world, and an article was even published in a Milwaukee (Wis.) paper. Their main criticism, as the French newspapers eagerly reported, concerned Rodin’s aesthetic approach, which challenged the conventional idea of a public monument by not making the writer easily recognizable. The Société des Gens de Lettres, who had commissioned it several years earlier, refused to accept the statue. In 1898, when Rodin first exhibited his monument to Balzac at the Paris Salon, it caused a huge scandal. THE MONUMENT TO BALZAC: A SOURCE OF CONTROVERSY
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