"I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself"
About this Quote
The line “real magician” is doing sly work. It reframes photography away from mere documentation and toward transformation. Trees are the props; light is the act that turns them into drama, mood, and meaning. In Steichen’s era, that was a pointed stance. Early photography fought for legitimacy as art, and Steichen - moving between Pictorialist softness and later, sharper modernist clarity - spent a career proving the camera wasn’t a clerical instrument. Calling light a magician is a claim about authorship: the photographer doesn’t invent the world, but can collaborate with its most powerful illusionist.
The subtext is also a quiet demotion of human control. You can study form all day, but the thing that makes an image feel alive is contingent, fleeting, unownable: the angle of sun, the haze in air, the hour’s particular mercy. That’s why the sentence has the rhythm of someone being humbled into attention. It’s less “I learned a fact” than “I learned where the power is.”
Context matters: Steichen photographed fashion, war, celebrities, flowers. Across those genres, light is the constant translator - turning glamour into icon, suffering into testimony, a plant into something close to revelation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nature |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Steichen, Edward. (2026, January 15). I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-knew-of-course-that-trees-and-plants-had-roots-147999/
Chicago Style
Steichen, Edward. "I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-knew-of-course-that-trees-and-plants-had-roots-147999/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-knew-of-course-that-trees-and-plants-had-roots-147999/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.
