Danziger Gallery has opened its fall 2011 season with an extraordinary exhibition featuring 80 photographs by legendary photographer Edward Steichen, all printed by the renowned George Tice. These remarkable prints represent the final collaboration between the two masters, as Tice was the last person to print for Steichen during the photographer's lifetime. The exhibition not only celebrates Steichen's artistic genius but also showcases the exceptional printing quality that has defined George Tice's distinguished career.

Edward Steichen was born Édouard Jean Steichen in Bivange, Luxembourg, in 1879. His family immigrated to Chicago in 1881 and later relocated to Milwaukee in 1889, when young Steichen was just 10 years old. At age 15 in 1894, he began a four-year lithography apprenticeship with the American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. Though he was a precocious and talented draftsman who initially saw himself as a painter, Steichen's path changed dramatically in 1895 when he purchased his first camera—a secondhand Kodak box detective camera—and began experimenting with the still relatively new medium of photography.

Steichen's career took a pivotal turn in 1900 when he met Alfred Stieglitz during a stop in New York City while en route to Paris. In that first meeting, Stieglitz praised Steichen's painting but purchased three of his photographic prints, recognizing the young artist's potential in photography. The two maintained contact, and in 1902, when Stieglitz was developing what would become Camera Work magazine, he asked Steichen to design the logo and help edit the publication. Camera Work went on to become arguably the most influential journal of photography ever published, cementing Steichen's place in photographic history.

While Stieglitz remained firmly committed to the fine art approach to photography, Steichen was interested in expanding his reach, influence, and connections in the commercial world. Never one to shy away from commercial opportunities, by 1910 Steichen was enthusiastically taking on editorial assignments. His photographs of Paul Poiret dresses published in the magazine Art et Décoration in 1911 are widely regarded as the first modern fashion photographs ever published, marking a revolutionary moment in both photography and fashion journalism.

By the mid-1920s, Steichen had become the highest-paid photographer in America, achieving unprecedented commercial success. In 1923, he was hired as chief photographer for Condé Nast Publications, and at one point during the 1920s, he earned $100,000 a year from his advertising work alone—an astronomical sum for that era. Though his commercial success created a rift with his mentor Alfred Stieglitz, who held a more high-minded view of photography's purpose, Steichen had reached the conclusion that photography's natural function was utilitarian: a thoroughly modern means of human communication.

For the next fifteen years, Steichen leveraged the vast resources and prestige of the Condé Nast empire to produce an body of work of unequaled brilliance. He put his exceptional talents and prodigious energies to work dramatizing and glamorizing contemporary culture and its most notable achievers across multiple fields—politics, literature, journalism, dance, theater, opera, cinema, and the world of high fashion. His work during this period established new standards for celebrity photography and commercial portraiture.

Steichen's portraits have remarkably survived the test of time, demonstrating his uncanny intuition for distilling the public personas of the famous and making them simultaneously familiar and iconic. This extraordinary talent makes him the founding father of our present-day celebrity culture. His portraits hold an extraordinary place in our visual memory, including his startling depiction of J.P. Morgan as the archetypal robber baron, clutching a chair arm that resembles a gleaming dagger; his intimate close-up of a feline Gloria Swanson, glowering behind black-lace foliage; and his restrained observation of an impossibly handsome and debonair Gary Cooper.

Steichen's genius in portraiture lay in his ability to coax his subjects into heightened expressions of their innermost character. He once seriously considered entering the movie industry, and there was indeed a distinctly cinematic quality evident throughout much of his work. As legendary actress Greta Garbo told him after one particularly successful photo shoot: "You should be a motion-picture director. You understand." Sometimes performing artists were so impressed by his vision that they incorporated his ideas into their own work—Steichen's portrait of Fred Astaire silhouetted against his own larger-than-life shadow actually inspired similar visual setups in the dancer's later films.

At the outbreak of World War II, Steichen's career took another dramatic turn when he became chief of Navy combat photography, a position he embraced with characteristic enthusiasm and dedication. After the war ended, Steichen made the significant decision to give up assignment work altogether and turned his attention to what he considered his crowning achievement: a grand thematic project designed to advance the cause of world peace through the universal language of photography.

This ambitious project, titled "The Family of Man," comprised 503 photographs taken by 273 photographers from 68 different countries around the world. The groundbreaking exhibition debuted at The Museum of Modern Art in 1955 and strove to depict experiences common to all mankind as reflected in diverse cultures across the globe. The show's impact was enormous—it traveled to 72 foreign venues over the following decade and was viewed by an estimated nine million people worldwide. While some critics found its earnest humanistic message somewhat naive and out of touch with the complexities of a world undergoing chaotic change, it remained a vast popular success, with the accompanying book selling an impressive two and a half million copies.

The exhibition "Edward Steichen, The Last Printing" runs until October 29, 2011, at Danziger Gallery, located at 527 West 23rd Street, New York 10011. This remarkable show offers visitors a unique opportunity to experience Steichen's photographic legacy through the masterful printing craftsmanship of George Tice, representing a bridge between two generations of photographic excellence.