Edward Steichen - Early Life

Early Life

Steichen was born Éduard Jean Steichen in Bivange, Luxembourg, the son of Jean-Pierre and Marie Kemp Steichen. Jean-Pierre Steichen initially immigrated to the United States in 1880. Marie Steichen brought the infant Eduard along once Jean-Pierre had settled in Chicago, in 1881. The family, with the addition of Eduard's younger sister Lilian, moved to Milwaukee in 1889, when Steichen was 10.

In 1894, at the age of fifteen, Steichen began a four-year lithography apprenticeship with the American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. After hours he would sketch and draw, and began to teach himself to paint. Having come across a camera shop near to his work, he visited frequently with curiosity until he persuaded himself to buy his first camera, a secondhand Kodak box "detective" camera, in 1895. Steichen and his friends who were also interested in drawing and photography pooled together their funds, rented a small room in a Milwaukee office building, and began calling themselves the Milwaukee Art Students League. The group also hired Richard Lorenz and Robert Schade for occasional lectures.

Steichen was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1900, and signed the naturalization papers as Edward J. Steichen; however, he continued to use his birth name of Eduard until after the First World War.