Ralph Steiner American, 1899-1986 Ralph Steiner (born in Cleveland) was a modernist photographer and filmmaker known for his clear, sharply focused images of everyday America. Having developed an early interest in photography, Steiner spent the year following graduation from Dartmouth College studying at the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York (1921-22). He worked as a plate engraver at the Manhattan Photogravure Company, then undertook a career as a magazine and advertising photographer. Deeply impressed by the technical quality of Paul Strand's pictures, Steiner spent the summer and early fall of 1929 improving his own technical skills. That same year he also began experimenting with filmmaking, producing the avant-garde film H2O. During the 1930s he continued to make films, producing Surf and Seaweed, Mechanical Principles, and Pie in the Sky. In 1935 Steiner joined Strand as a cameraman on Pare Lorentz's documentary film, The Plow that Broke the Plains, and several years later collaborated with photographer Willard Van Dyke on The City, a documentary shown at the 1939 New York World's Fair. In the early 1940s Steiner moved to Hollywood, where he worked for mgm and rko. Upon his return to New York later in the decade, he resumed his career as a commercial photographer. During the 1960s he was able to spend more time doing his own work, producing both photographs and films. His autobiography, A Point of View (1978), was followed by a book of his cloud photographs, In Pursuit of Clouds (1985). M.M.