‘Gloria Swanson, New York 1924’ by Edward Steichen, sold for $540,000 in 2007

"When Edward Steichen, a painter and pioneer of artistic photography, was hired as chief photographer of Condé Nast magazines and started work on its flagship titles Vogue and Vanity Fair in 1922, he crossed a border. Burning all his canvases, he declared: “Art for art’s sake is dead, if it ever lived.”

At Vanity Fair, Steichen took some of the most memorable – and valuable – celebrity photos in history. His shadowy portraits of Noël Coward, George Gershwin and Gary Cooper are highly sought-after, and a silver gelatin print of his 1924 shot of the lace-covered face of Gloria Swanson, the silent film star, was auctioned for $540,000 by Phillips de Pury in New York in 2007.

His artistic reputation suffered from his defection to the world of commercial photography. “People thought it was unforgivable to work at a magazine, although I don’t think he cared,” says Anne Kennedy, co-founder of Art + Commerce, a New York agency that used to represent Leibovitz and has fashion photographers including Patrick Demarchelier and Steven Meisel on its books.

Steichen was eventually forgiven, though, and became director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1947. The example he set, of moving between magazine and art photography, was later followed by others including Irving Penn, who worked for Vogue, and Diane Arbus, who worked for Harper’s Bazaar."(John Gapper)