EDWARD STEICHEN (1879-1973)
Lot 5 PROPERTY FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION

Perception is a mental process that merely registers just as the lens registers. The good photographer not only sees -- he looks and in the process of looking, insight is developed to the point where the object looks back at the photographer -- and together they make the photo.

EDWARD STEICHEN

EDWARD STEICHEN (1879-1973)

Katherine Cornell, 1924

Closed13 November 2007

Price Realised

GBP 42,500

More Information

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EDWARD STEICHEN (1879-1973)
Katherine Cornell, 1924
gelatin silver contact print
numbered '18' in negative; titled in unknown hand in pencil on verso
9 7/8 x 7¾in. (25.1 x 19.7cm.)

From the artist;
by descent to Joanna Steichen, his widow;
with Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York;
acquired by present owner, 2000.

Specialist note

Born in Germany in 1898 and raised in New York, Katherine Cornell earned the nickname 'The First Lady of the American Theater' honouring a career spanning 30 years on the stage. In 1948 Cornell won Broadway's Tony Award for Best Dramatic Actress for her role as Cleopatra in a revival of William Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra'.

According to Joanna Steichen: 'Steichen had much in common with the successful actors he photographed....[He] had great respect for the actors who, like Katherine Cornell, fully inhabited their roles and seemed simply to become the characters they played' (Steichen's Legacy,pp.323-33).