Edward Steichen, The Flatiron—Evening from Camera Work (vol. 14, plate 8), 1904, printed 1906, photogravure on pulp paper, 8 3/8 x 6 7/16 in. Mead Art Museum.
Introduction:
The Flatiron—Evening from Camera Work (vol. 14, plate 8), hereafter referred to as The Flatiron, presents a rainy vision of Manhattan at twilight, with a fog-ridden sky and wet city streets. The hazy scene is compounded by the camera’s own focus being blurred slightly, casting the city in fuzzy silhouettes. The Flatiron was taken in 1904 and printed in 1906 by Luxembourgish-American photographer, Edward Steichen (1879–1973). Steichen was no stranger to the soft-focused painterly style that appears in this print, especially not in the early years of his photography career.1 In 1902, the Flatiron building opened in Manhattan as one of America’s first proto-skyscrapers, drawing attention due to its unique triangular shape, which was dictated by the city’s grid. The building is framed in the middle of the photograph in the background, starting just above the horizon level created by the road, and then stretching up towards the top. Despite being the focal point of the work, finer details of the Flatiron are lost to the pervasive fog that swallows up the rest of the city. In the foreground, in front of the Flatiron, hangs a dark curved branch, blocking the view of the eponymous building. Weather presents itself physically within Steichen’s The Flatiron as a constant force in shaping the perception of Manhattan’s nightlife, and working in tandem with urban life.
American Pictorialism:
Pictorialism was a movement defined by increased personal expression within the photographic medium in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, created by photographers with a desire to elevate photography to an artistic status.2 The soft-focus and blurred visage of The Flatiron is emblematic of this timeframe and style of photography, and makes it one of the most recognizable examples of pictorialism in America. Anglo-American pictorialism was in large part influenced by the Japanese “ukiyo-e,” meaning “pictures of the floating world,” woodblock prints of the 17th to 19th centuries, which emphasized flattened spaces and natural environmentals.3 The Flatiron’s harmonious quality of nature working alongside urban environments is particularly connected to woodblock prints. Steichen’s photograph of the building shares a resemblance with a similarly named The Flatiron taken a year earlier by American pictorialist photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946). Stieglitiz’s photograph shows the Flatiron standing in daylight after a snowstorm in New York, although it similarly composes a tree covering the view of the building. Stieglitz and Steichen were good friends in the early 1900s, with many of Steichen’s pieces appearing in Camera Work, Stieglitz’s quarterly journal, which ran from 1903 to 1917.4 The Flatiron is deeply linked to pictorialism in North America within this period, and represents a deeper exploration of how photography is shaped by an artist beyond the practical representation of a scene.
Weather and the Process:
Photography often is interpreted with a much greater claim to reality than other mediums; Steichen and other pictorialists of the early eighteenth century hoped to challenge this concept with their work. In actuality, the photographic process is extremely alterable, and Steichen in particular was known to experiment with his works. This included putting water on the camera lens and altering the still-wet gum bichromate of the negative, in order to achieve a piece that emphasizes artistic expression over pragmatic or specific representations of his subjects.5 Originally, The Flatiron was made by Edward Steichen as a platinum print, colored with gum arabic and potassium bichromate. Photogravure prints, which are the most common prints of the piece, are created by first etching the photo negative into a copper plate, then spreading ink over the etched depressions, and finally printing onto wet paper.6 The foggy perspective of the city, then, is drawn somewhat into question. To what extent did Steichen alter his image of The Flatiron in order to achieve the desired perspective? Subtle variations in prints show different concentrations of color and tonal ranges, with other versions having a stronger blue or grey-toned appearance. “Fog,” when referring to photography, is a double entendre of sorts; photographic fog is associated with issues within a camera or the dark room that causes bright spots to appear onto a photo negative.7 While The Flatiron is unlikely to have been impacted by chemical fogging, the physical alteration of a work is key to understanding Steichen’s relationship to the medium.
Weather in the City:
The framing of The Flatiron is extremely deliberate; despite its focal point being the Flatiron building, Steichen goes to great lengths to soften and naturalize this view of Manhattan. In comparison to Stieglitz’s photograph of the same scene, Steichen substitutes the thick tree trunk for its spindly branches, implying a greater rurality to the city.8 The fog also corresponds to a heightened sense of mystery and unknowability within the city. This has the impact of prefacing the role of weather in Manhattan much deeper, as the civilians riding carriages and passing through the rainy scene are abstracted to silhouetted shapes. The weather remains the most constant force in the photograph, stretching from a wet road illuminated by distant streetlamps, to an awning fogged sky. The city is not completely consumed by fog, however, as glowing street lamps are visible hovering above the ground, casting reflections on the wet road. These streetlamps act as the brightest highlights in the work, in contrast with the carriages and the figures closely to the left, which are the darkest shadows. Just as a tree branch covers a building, people build to cover a sky. The dynamic relationship of The Flatiron is one that is in conversation with the presence of nature in an urban setting.
Footnote
- Joel Smith, Edward Steichen: The Early Years (Princeton University Press, 2011), 11. ↩︎
- Hope Kingsley, “Pictorialism,” Oxford Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t067402. ↩︎
- Karen M. Fraser, “Fukuhara Shinzō and the ‘Japanese’ Pictorial Aesthetic,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 26, no. 1 (2014): 209–227. ↩︎
- Smith, Edward Steichen, 37. ↩︎
- Kaslyne O’Connor, Ariel Pate, Sylvie Pénichon, and Francesca Casadio, “Moonlight or Midnight? Researching the Phases of Edward Steichen’s Moonrise Prints,” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 59, no. 2 (2020): 111–122. ↩︎
- Colin N. Bennett, Elements of Photogravure: Photo Printing from Copper Plates (London: Crosby Lockwood & Son, 1927). ↩︎
- Elizabeth W. Hutchinson, “Conjuring in Fog: Eadweard Muybridge at Point Reyes,” in Picturing, ed. Rachael Z. DeLue (University of Chicago Press, 2016), 114–147. ↩︎
- William Sharpe, “New York, Night, and Cultural Mythmaking: The Nocturne in Photography, 1900–1925,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art 2, no. 3 (1988): 3–21. ↩︎
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