Vrouw met zwarte vaas

1894

Pio Nono College and a lithography apprenticeship

At fifteen he enters the Catholic boys’ school Pio Nono College, where his talent for drawing is noticed; he later quits it for a four-year lithography apprenticeship with the American Fine Art Company in Milwaukee. After hours he sketches and begins to teach himself painting.

1895

First camera: the start of photography

Having discovered a camera shop near his work, he buys a secondhand Kodak box “detective” camera and begins to practise photography. He and his friends, who are interested in drawing and photography, then pool their funds and rent a small room in Milwaukee, calling themselves the Milwaukee Art Students League and hiring Richard Lorenz and Robert Schade for occasional lectures.

1899

Photographs at the Philadelphia Salon

His photographs are exhibited at the second Philadelphia Photographic Salon.

1900

Meets Stieglitz on the way to Paris

He leaves Milwaukee for Paris to study art; on a letter of introduction from Clarence H. White he meets Alfred Stieglitz in New York, who praises his background in painting and buys three of his photographic prints. He will spend several years in Paris and discover avant-garde art there.

1900

American citizenship

He becomes a US citizen and signs the naturalization papers as Edward J. Steichen, but goes on using his birth name, Éduard, until after the First World War.

1902

The Camera Work logo and the Photo-Secession

When Stieglitz is planning the magazine that becomes Camera Work, he asks Steichen to design its logo with a custom typeface; Steichen becomes the most frequently shown photographer in the journal. In the same year he is one of the founders of the Photo-Secession in New York.