Midnight Lake George

<p>Edward Steichen, a painter as well as a photographer, was an early adherent of Pictorialism, which promoted photography as a fine art and emphasized handcraft in printing. A protégé of the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, he designed the cover and layout of Stieglitz’s journal <em>Camera Work</em>, a publication championing the medium’s artistic potential. Steichen excelled at the gum bichromate process, which allowed artists to layer different colors and manipulate the emulsion, while still wet, in a painterly fashion; here, he was able to enhance highlights by removing pigment with a brush. As he wrote in the first issue of <em>Camera Work</em>, “every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible.”</p> <p>For more on Edward Steichen’s work in the Art Institute’s collection visit the website: <a href="http://media.artic.edu/steichen/index.html">Edward Steichen's World War I Years</a>.</p> <p>For more on the Alfred Stieglitz collection at the Art Institute, along with in-depth object information, please visit the website: <a href="http://media.artic.edu/stieglitz">The Alfred Stieglitz Collection</a>.</p>