In the years immediately following the First World War, Steichen retreated to his home in the village of
Voulangis, on the outskirts of Paris, to meditate and rediscover himself as an artist.

During a period that Steichen would recall as a time of "deep, earnest soul-searching", the master of pictorialism would undergo a metamorphosis into modernism.

He would also perform two transformative acts that would add a mythological dimension to his artistic mystique -
he would destroy his work as a painter and he would photograph a cup and saucer 1,000 times.

In the garden of Voulangis he would revolutionize his vision of photography.

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