Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), Bouquet of flowers, December 8, 1939. Dye imbibition print. George Eastman Museum, bequest of Edward Steichen. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
For Edward Steichen, the garden was never separate from art. The celebrated photographer, painter, and plant breeder spent much of his life cultivating flowers with the same intensity and curiosity that he brought to the camera. Now, Edward Steichen and the Garden at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, brings this lesser-known dimension of his practice into focus. On view through September 6, 2026, the exhibition traces Steichen’s lifelong relationship with plants through photographs, paintings, archival materials, and objects drawn from the museum’s collection alongside loans from major institutions.
Steichen spent seven decades transforming the language of photography. The garden gave him a place to observe closely, experiment patiently, and accept the unpredictable rhythms of living things. For him, flowers were not simply beautiful subjects but collaborators in an ongoing artistic process, inspiring both his photographs and his experiments in cultivation.
Long before he devoted himself fully to the garden, Steichen developed a deep relationship with horticulture. Throughout his career, plants appeared repeatedly in his photographs and paintings. He approached them with the same attention to structure, light, form, and atmosphere that defined his broader artistic practice.
In 1938, at the age of 59, Steichen closed his commercial photography studio and turned his attention toward the propagation of flowers. His wife, Dana, photographed him pollinating a delphinium that same year. The image captures him not behind a camera but bent toward a flower, his hands engaged in the intimate work of cultivation. It offers a portrait of the artist through his garden, showing how deeply his creative life had become intertwined with the living materials he studied.
Rather than treating flowers as botanical specimens, he photographed them as living forms with their own visual presence. He emphasized their vertical movement, sculptural structures, and subtle variations in color, allowing the camera to reveal the character of each plant. In his photographs, flowers possess the drama of portraiture. Stems rise like figures and petals unfold with the presence of faces.
Bringing together works from the George Eastman Museum’s significant archive of Steichen’s work with important loans from institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, the Block Museum of Art, Art Bridges, and the Sheldon Museum of Art, the exhibition offers a fuller portrait of the artist.
Steichen once dreamed of a life in the garden. In the end, he found not an escape from art but another way to practice it. Through the flowers, he continued to explore the questions that had guided his photography for decades: How can light transform a form? How does close observation change the way we see? And what happens when an artist gives beauty the time and space to grow?
Edward Steichen and the Garden is on view at the George Eastman Museum through September 6, 2026.
The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, explores Edward Steichen’s lifelong relationship with flowers through photography, painting, horticulture, and archival materials.
Photo: George Eastman Museum/Erich Camping
Photo: George Eastman Museum/Erich Camping
Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), Heavy Roses, Voulangis, France, June 1914. Palladium print. Museum of Modern Art, bequest of Grace M. Mayer. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
The celebrated photographer turned to gardening as a serious creative pursuit, eventually closing his commercial studio in 1938 to focus on cultivating and propagating flowers.
Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), Delphiniums, 1940. Dye imbibition print. George Eastman Museum, bequest of Edward Steichen. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), Membership prospectus for the American Delphinium Society, 1936. Color lithograph. George Eastman Museum, bequest of Edward Steichen. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), Delphiniums on the Umpawaug Farm, July 6, 1939. Gelatin silver print. Edward Steichen Archive, VII.D.i.23, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
Steichen photographed flowers with the same sensitivity he brought to portraiture, transforming delphiniums and other blooms into studies of light, form, structure, and personality.
Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), Self Portrait with Photographic Paraphernalia, 1929. Gelatin silver print. George Eastman Museum, gift of Edward Steichen Hodes. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), Bee on a Sunflower, ca. 1920. Gelatin silver print, printed 1961. George Eastman Museum, bequest of Edward Steichen. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), The Lady of the Camillias – Lillian Gish for Vanity Fair, 1931. Gelatin silver print. George Eastman Museum, bequest of Edward Steichen. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg, 1879–1973), Foxgloves, France, 1926. Gelatin silver print. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of Richard and Jackie Hollander in memory of Ellyn Lee Hollander. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
Edward Steichen and the Garden remains on view at the George Eastman Museum through September 6, 2026.
Photo: George Eastman Museum/Erich Camping
Photo: George Eastman Museum/Erich Camping
Photo: George Eastman Museum/Erich Camping
Dana Steichen (American, 1894–1957), Mr. Steichen is caught by Mrs. Steichen crossing a white delphinium with a deep purple to increase the size of the white flower variety, 1938. Gelatin silver print. Edward Steichen Archive, VII.D.i.32, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. © 2025 Estate of Edward Steichen / Licensed by ARS, New York
Exhibition Information:
Edward Steichen
Edward Steichen and the Garden
March 27-September 6, 2026
George Eastman Museum
900 East Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607
George Eastman Museum: Website | Instagram
My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by the George Eastman Museum
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