Edward Steichen (1879–1973) was a Luxembourgish-American photographer, painter, and museum curator who was one of the most influential figures in the history of photography. Born Eduard Jean Steichen in Bivange, Luxembourg, he emigrated with his family to the United States as a child and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Steichen's early career was defined by Pictorialism — the movement to establish photography as a fine art. His luminous, atmospheric photographs of the early 1900s, including his iconic image of the Flatiron Building (1904), are among the masterpieces of Pictorialist photography. He was a co-founder, with Alfred Stieglitz, of the Photo-Secession group and the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (later known as 291), which became the most important venue for modern art in America.

After World War I, Steichen renounced Pictorialism and embraced sharp-focus, modernist photography. As chief photographer for Condé Nast publications from 1923 to 1937, he revolutionized fashion and celebrity photography for Vogue and Vanity Fair, producing images of startling elegance and sophistication that defined the visual culture of the Jazz Age.

In 1947, Steichen became the director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, where he curated "The Family of Man" (1955), one of the most visited exhibitions in the history of photography, seen by over nine million people worldwide. This monumental exhibition of 503 photographs from 68 countries remains one of the most ambitious curatorial achievements in any medium. His work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the George Eastman Museum, and the Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art in Luxembourg.