Three pears and an apple, France
Artist
Edward Steichen
(American, born Luxembourg, 1879 - 1973)
Date1921; printed ca. 1960
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 14 3/16 × 11 3/16 inches (36.04 × 28.42 cm)
Sheet: 15 7/8 × 12 5/16 inches (40.32 × 31.27 cm)
Mount: 16 × 12 15/16 inches (40.64 × 32.86 cm)
Sheet: 15 7/8 × 12 5/16 inches (40.32 × 31.27 cm)
Mount: 16 × 12 15/16 inches (40.64 × 32.86 cm)
Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Object number2005.27.2187
SignedSigned on image recto, lower right, in black marker: "STEICHEN"
Inscribednone
Markingsnone
On View
Not on viewCollections
Terms
20th-Century
Photographs from the Hallmark Photographic Collection. Sioux City Art
Center, Sioux City, IA, January 10 –February 22, 1981, no cat.
Rotation 8. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 12 – October 11, 2010, no cat.
An experimental work created while Edward Steichen was living in France after World War I, this photograph was made under very dim light, with the camera's shutter open for 36 hours: a full day, a night and part of the following day. The soft, directionless light gives these simple forms a powerfully sculptural presence; they are rendered as iconic, even heroic, objects. Further, the lengthy exposure and fluctuating temperatures from day to night lend a kind of animation to these still forms. For example, close examination reveals that the foreground apple has a slightly blurred, or doubled, outline: a result of its slight contraction and expansion in the changing temperature of Steichen's greenhouse.
Purchased from the artist by Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO, 1969;
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.
Given by Hallmark Cards, Inc. to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.
Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963), 64 (repro).
Copyright© The Estate of Edward Steichen / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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