Using a painstaking technique of multiple printing, Steichen achieved prints of such painterly seductiveness they have never been equaled. This view of a pond in the woods at Mamaroneck, New York is subtly colored as Whistler's Nocturnes, and like them, is a tone poem of twilight, indistinction, and suggestiveness. Commenting on such pictures in 1910, Charles Caffin wrote in Camera Work: "It is in the penumbra, between the clear visibility of things and their total extinction into darkness, when the concreteness of appearances becomes merged in half-realised, half-baffled vision, that spirit seems to disengage itself from matter to envelop it with a mystery of soul-suggestion."
This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
Open Access
As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.
API
Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Painterly Photograph," January 9–February 28, 1973.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz," May 18–July 16, 1978.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. "On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography," May 7, 1989–July 30, 1989.
Art Institute of Chicago. "On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography," September 16, 1989–November 26, 1989.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography," December 21, 1989–February 25, 1990.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "American Tonalism: Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Photographs," March 18–June 2, 1997.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Johnson Gallery, Selections from the Collection 26," May 15–September 18, 2000.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989," January 30, 2009–April 22, 2009.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand," November 8, 2010–April 10, 2011.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop," October 10, 2012–January 27, 2013.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. "Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop," February 17–May 5, 2013.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. "Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop," June 2–August 25, 2013.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Apollo's Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography," July 3–September 22, 2019.
Stieglitz, Alfred, ed. Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly 14 (April 1906).
Naef, Weston J. The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978. no. 482.
Greenough, Sarah. On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography. 1st ed. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1989. pl. 172.
Théberge, Pierre. Lost Paradise: Symbolist Europe. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1995. ill. 167.
Smith, Joel. Edward Steichen: The Early Years. Princeton: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. pl. 26.
Brandow, Todd, and William A. Ewing. Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography. Minneapolis: Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, 2007. fig. 217.
Fineman, Mia. Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. no. 57, pp. 84, 222–223.
Vila, Anna, and Silvia A. Centeno. "FTIR, Raman and XRF Identification of the Image Materials in Turn of the 20th Century Pigment-Based Photographs." Michrochemical Journal 106 (January 2013). pp. 255–262.
Edward J. Steichen (American (born Luxembourg), Bivange 1879–1973 West Redding, Connecticut)
1943
Resources for Research
The Met's Libraries and Research Centers provide unparalleled resources for research and welcome an international community of students and scholars.
The Met Collection API is where all makers, creators, researchers, and dreamers can connect to the most up-to-date data and public domain images for The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.
Feedback
We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.
The Met's Department of Photographs houses a collection of more than 75,000 works spanning the history of photography from its invention in the 1830s to the present.
