Edward Steichen was a major figure in American photography. Transcending the nineteenth-century Pictorialist movement with an emphasis on photography as an art form, Steichen made portraiture a stunning commercial product for publication in Vanity Fair magazine with his revolutionary photographs of young, aspiring film stars. His sense of mood and drama in the presentation of these burgeoning actors introduced a new concept into their relationship of art with commercial enterprise. Steichen was appointed by Condé Nast as chief photographer for Vanity Fair which at the time was less than nine years into production. Nast recognized Steichen's achievements in various applications of photography. He trusted the artist to achieve a visual effect for the magazine that set it apart from other publications just as he had trusted Frank Crowninshield as its editor. Vanity Fair was unique in its focus on "things people talk about at parties -- the arts, sports, humor," asserted Crowninshield. Inevitably, Vanity Fair soon became a "pioneer in so many areas that it was later said to be a significant yardstick of American culture," along with setting "a new standard for photography and picture journalism." The visually pleasing magazine was noted for its first-rate writing by young authors and for the 1930 Pulitzer Prize won by Edward Steichen. Steichen was first and foremost an artist and secondarily a photographer, but he was also an innovator in the distinct visual attributes that photography had to offer. Working with photographer Alfred Stieglitz in his promotion of the Photo-Secession movement to rid photography of its mere documentary role, Steichen designed the first cover and the initial publicity for Camera Work, Stieglitz's publication to advance photography as a fine art. He worked as a painter in France before World War I and during the war directed aerial photography for Allied Forces. After the war he became enamored of fashion and advertising photography; this was the time he worked with Vanity Fair. The number of photographs Steichen produced for Vanity Fair exceeds that of any other photographer on the staff. Steichen recognized that Hollywood's methodology in the formation of the "star" was "image" focused upon sophistication and recognition, soon to become an American icon by its familiarity. The fresh, young faces of these stars were defined by a formula both romantic and expressive -- some portrayed in costume and role as in Steichen's 1927 portrait of Fred Astaire; some as elegant portrayals of the emblems of beauty as in his many portraits of youthful actors Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, and Greta Garbo among many others. As Steichen's career moved to another phase, he left Vanity Fair in 1937 turning his attention to the blurring of aesthetic distinctions that were being produced by such social commentary projects as the Farm Security Administration photographs in Franklin D. Roosevelt's program to document the results of the American Depression of the 1930s and the photoreportage of documentary magazines like Life Magazine. During World War II, he became the Director of Naval Combat Photography, and, at the conclusion of the war, took on the directorship of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His expansive creative output, however, was never greater than the years of his involvement with Vanity Fair. The Lore Degenstein Gallery presents a collection of more than seventy of the photographic portraits produced by Edward Steichen in his Vanity Fair years on loan from the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York. It is our pleasure to exhibit these images as our ongoing support of the medium of photography in its multitude of manifestations as fine art, as documentation, and as aesthetic offering for students in the Department of Art on our campus. We are particularly appreciative of the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment which provides ongoing support for the programming of the Lore Degenstein Gallery.   Dr. Valerie Livingston   Marlene Deitrich, Edward Steichen, Gelatin silver print, 1931