title:
Portrait of Greta Garbo for Vanity Fair

artist: Edward Steichen

year:
1928

size:
16 5/8" x 13 1/2"

process:
vintage gelatin silver print

marks:
on verso of print, stamped in ink, "Photograph by Edward Steichen/Printed from the original negative" and various notations in pencil.

exhibitions:
"On the Art of Fixing A Shadow: 150 Years of Photography"
May 7, 1989- February 25, 1990
Credit:
The Richard Sandor Collection

Traveling show organized by the National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art May 7-July 30, 1989
Art Institute of Chicago September 16-November 26, 1989
Los Angeles County Museum of Art December 21, 1989-February 25, 1990
**credited in exhibition catalogue

soundbite:
Steichen on photographing Greta Garbo:
Garbo came in off the set. The director says now you only have five minutes. I said alright, so I had a kitchen chair there for her to sit on. I draped my black cloth all over the back and I asked her to sit on that chair. She sat on the chair and like a good sport, she straddled the chair, leaning her arms on the back facing me. And then I started to photograph. She would turn her head this way and shake her head in this way. And this wasn't the Garbo I was interested in. This was the regular Hollywood Garbo. So I said it's too bad we have to photograph all these things with the hairdo you're wearing, this Hollywood hairdo. She said, oh, this hair-she put her hand up to her head and brushed them back, "Now let's make a photograph of that." Good sport again that she was, she went into it and those are the only pictures I ever used of Greta Garbo.

Masters of Photography: Edward Steichen, ©1989 Camera Three Productions, Inc.