Edward Steichen, Philippe Halsman, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Lewis Hine - Names your photography collection should include June 18 2025
Edward Steichen
An influential curator and prominent photographer, Edward Steichen was a key figure of early 20th century photography. Renouncing both painting and Pictorialism, Steichen championed modernism, opening Photo-Secession galleries with Alfred Stieglitz, serving as director of Photography at MoMA and chief photographer for Condé Nast. Steichen’s photograph of Greta Garbo was taken during his tenure at Vanity Fait magazine. Perhaps his most definitive portrait of the time, the photograph was taken on the set of A Woman of Affairs (1928).
Philippe Halsman
Notorious for his dazzling front-paged portraits of celebrities, intellectuals, and politicians, across magazines like Look, Esquire, and Life, Philippe Halsman was considered one of the world’s top ten photographers in 1958. On assignment from Life in 1952, Halsman photographed Marilyn Monroe, who by 1953, was one of the most marketable Hollywood stars and the most popular sex-symbol of the 1950s and 1960s. Halsman recalls Monroe’s flirtatious nature throughout the shoot, capturing between 40 to 50 pictures, some of which now belong to MoMA’s Halsman collection.
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Celebrated for his spontaneous, joyful photographs, Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s free spirit and love of life were revealed in his candid approach to capturing everyday subjects. Lartigue met Renée on the streets of Paris in 1930 and was instantly enamored by her chic elegance, thus beginning a dream-like, two-year affair where he documented her endlessly throughout the South of France. Decades after Renée’s passing in 1977, her descendants quietly released the 340 unseen photographs documenting her relationship with Lartigue for auction.
Lewis Hine
Lewis Hine is considered one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century and a pioneer of social documentary photography. In 1904 he had begun a series of photographs documenting the arrival of immigrants at Ellis Island. After Hine’s death in 1940, his son donated his prints and negatives to the Photo League, where Walter Rosenblum, a past president of the League, was accused of having printed and selling hundreds of modern versions of Lewis Hine’s work to six dealers claiming that the photos were printed by Hine.