Daily Inspiration Quote by Edward Steichen

Steichen’s line is a quiet flex: it makes seeing sound like an ethical act, not a technical one. Coming from a photographer who moved from Pictorialist atmospherics to razor-sharp modernism, it reads less like a poet’s aphorism and more like a craft note turned worldview. He’s not talking about eyesight; he’s talking about attention disciplined into empathy.

The repetition of “commence” does heavy lifting. It refuses the fantasy of instant revelation and insists on a beginning that can be chosen and practiced. You don’t “get” the world in a single, cinematic epiphany; you start noticing, then noticing changes you. The subtext is almost corrective: if you claim to feel deeply but can’t be bothered to look closely, your feelings might be more self-expression than perception.

In Steichen’s century, that distinction mattered. Photography was busy proving it could be art, journalism, persuasion, propaganda. Steichen himself helped define mass photographic culture at MoMA and through projects like The Family of Man, which sold humanist connection on a global scale. “Commence to see” is the prerequisite for that humanism - and also its vulnerability. Seeing can be an opening, but it can also be a selection, a framing, a story you tell with a lens.

The quote works because it flips a common assumption: feelings don’t precede vision; vision trains feeling. It’s an argument for slowing down in a culture that confuses having an opinion with having looked.