Edward Steichen

palladium and ferroprussiate print, flush-mounted, the photographer's  'Photograph by Steichen, 139 East 69th Street, New York City' studio and copyright stamp and titled and annotated extensively in pencil on the reverse, 1920

Collection of Joanna T. Steichen, the photographer's widow

Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, 2002

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Edward Steichen, October 2000 - February 2001

Paris, Jeu de Paume, Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography, October - December 2007, and traveling to

Lausanne, Musée de l'Elysée, January - March 2008

Reggio Emilia, Palazzo Magnani, April - June 2008

Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, June - September 2008

Todd Brandow and William A. Ewing, Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography (Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis and the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, 2007), pl. 75 (this print)

Samuel M. Kootz, 'Edward J. Steichen,' Creative Art, May 1932, p. 363

Steichen the Photographer (The Museum of Modern Art, 1961), p. 32

Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, 1963), pl. 67

LIFE Library of Photography: The Art of Photography (New York, 1971), p. 49

Steichen—Eduard et Voulangis: The Early Modernist Period, 1915-1923 (Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Lumière Press, Toronto, 2011), p. 25

This early, exquisitely and subtly-toned palladium and ferroprussiate print, on semi-matte paper that is trimmed to the image, is in generally very good condition. It has been flush-mounted to brown board. As is typical of flush-mounted prints, there is rubbing at the edges with minor losses of emulsion. The upper and right edges appear to be inked. In raking light, slight scuffing is visible at the right edge. The reverse of the mount is age-darkened, soiled, and has small abrasions at the upper edge. In addition to the studio stamp and title, there are extensive processing annotations by the photographer in pencil, to wit: '2 separation negs-' 'd printer in sepia' 'e[?] printer in blue' 'red printer for tint' 'blue printer for black' no reproducing The reverse has been numbered '37.793' and 'cat #568' in pencil. There is also a remnant of paper tape in the lower left corner on the reverse with the following 'R 65' and '8 1/2 " wide' in ink and '2 Farbig' in pencil.
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This print of Edward Steichen’s Wheelbarrow and Flower Pots is an outstanding example of the photographer’s combined use of two separate print processes in a single image.  Using both the palladium and ferroprussiate processes, Steichen has created a print that possesses almost true-to-life coloration, as well as one that conveys a sense of volume and three-dimensionality. 

Palladium, with its warm reddish tones, is an apt compliment to ferroprussiate, or cyanotype, which renders an image in a deep blue to white tonal range.  In the present image, the highlights are rendered primarily in palladium, yielding the appropriate red tones of the clay flower pots.  Ferroprussiate is visible mostly in the print’s shadows, although a few cyan accents are visible throughout the image.  As is characteristic of Steichen’s meticulous approach to the craft of printing, the balance between the two different processes is masterfully handled. 

This print would have required two separate exposures.  Steichen may have made a first exposure of the negative on commercially available palladium photographic paper; after processing and drying, he would have then re-sensitized the paper with ferroprussiate emulsion, allowed it to dry, and made a secondary exposure.  Steichen’s technical notations, written in his vigorous hand on the reverse of this print’s mount, mention ‘from 2 separation negatives.’  This could indicate that each exposure was handled with a separate negative, each calibrated to the tonality of the emulsion being used.  These notations could alternatively represent Steichen’s characteristically specific instructions for reproducing this image in print.