EDWARD STEICHEN (1879–1973)

“Steichen’s photo (originally published in Vanity Fair in 1929) is, in many ways, the image that countless people have in mind when they think of Garbo. Her gaze is at-once so direct and so unreadable that it’s difficult to know if she’s offering the viewer a challenge, or an invitation. All we know for sure is that here is a rare sort of beauty: beguiling, disquieting, inscrutable.”—Ben Cosgrove, TIME Magazine