Wind Fire -- Thérèse Duncan on the Acropolis, 1921

Steichen was on holiday in Venice in 1921 at the same time as the dancer Isadora Duncan who was on her way to Greece with her dance troupe. With the promise that Steichen would be able to make motion pictures of her dancing on the Acropolis, Isadora persuaded him to accompany her. While she managed to pose for a few photographs at the Parthenon, it was with her pupil and adopted daughter Thérèse that Steichen produced this startling and remarkable image:

She was a living reincarnation of a Greek nymph. Once, while photographing the Parthenon, I lost sight of her, but I could hear her. When I asked where she was, she raised her arms in answer. I swung the camera around and photographed her arms against the background of the Erechtheum. And then we went out to a part of the Acropolis behind the Parthenon, and she posed on a rock, against the sky with her Greek garments. The wind pressed the garments tight to her body, and the ends were left flapping and fluttering. They actually crackled. This gave the effect of fire -- 'Wind Fire' (Steichen, A Life in Photography, np).

1 Grace Mayer joined The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1959 as Personal Assistant to Steichen. When he retired in 1961 and John Szarkowski was appointed Director the following year, Mayer was named Curator of Photography. From 1968 until her death in 1996, she devoted herself to the Edward Steichen Archive as its Curator.