At the same time these shows give us a glimpse into the pioneering spirit of not only Steichen but a host of other photographers, who took the craft of straight, stiffly-posed photographic portraiture and turned it into a new art form.

Vanity Fair, which attempts to be much more than a fashion magazine, received its title from William Makepeace Thackeray's satirical novel, Vanity Fair. It was serialized in Punch in 1847 and to this day is still as widely read as the magazine named after it.

One of the well-known lines from this novel states, "The world is a looking glass, and gives back to everyman the reflection of his own face." This is, of course, what photography at its best does, and is well documented in the AGO and ROM exhibits.

The AGO exhibit focuses strictly on Steichen, an American photographer, who in 1923 agreed to be chief photographer for the Condé Nast publications Vogue and Vanity Fair, magazines which have survived to this day. The exhibit at the ROM is concerned, as the show's title implies, with Vanity Fair portraits and so offers us insight into other photographers' approaches to fashion photography and public personality portraiture aside from Steichen.

Steichen's work at the AGO offers a black and white look, with the occasional sepia colored print, at the great personalities in fashion and the arts through the 1920s and '30s. One is struck by how these photos so far more effectively reveal something about the sitter and the eye of the photographer than many of the later color photographs included in the ROM exhibit. Color has a way of distracting our senses and consequently leads to what might be called 'gimmicky' photography to catch our attention, rather than light and shade with form and expression.

Included in this color category is Annie Leibowitz's 1991 Vanity Fair cover showing a highly pregnant Demi Moore in the nude, a photo the actress claimed had originally been shot for family consumption only. While this image has become an icon that inspired all sorts of imitations by other celebrities, it is part of a trend ever more evident in which we are drawn to an image only because of its more sensational presentation.

A whole section is devoted to Leibowitz at the ROM. It includes a short film with George Clooney. Here the revelation became clear that something has been lost to us once color became the medium of choice for photographers. Leibowitz, known for her sensational fashion images most recently caught the public's attention with her suggestive semi-nude photographs of the then 15-year-old Mylie Cyrus, which are not included in this show. But they are indicative of the extremes to which color images have been taken to catch the public's eye.

Also typical of this is the image of actress Julianne Moore, recreated by Michael Thompson in 2000 as the Grand Odalisque. This is based on a painting from 1814 by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Here is another perfect example of artifice taking over the art. What is worse, the imitation lacks the painting's softly curved odalisque and draws the eye not to her, but to the large, highly colored peacock-feather fan Moore holds in her hand, the candle set in the center of the photo and a blue curtain. Admittedly, Norman Jean Roy's color photograph of the actress Hilary Swank sprinting along a beach is a great sports photograph, yet it reveals little about the subject. That, of course, is what great art, whether in paint or as a photograph, is supposed to do. Reveal. The one image in this ROM series of color images that tells a great deal about the two people posing in it was taken in 2003 and appeared in Vanity Fair in the February 2004 issue. They are Lord Conrad Black and his wife, Barbara, at their former Palm Beach home. The photo says it all and needs no comment.

A black and white photograph of everybody's favorite Sirs, Sean Connery and Michael Cane, has a far greater impact, however, on the viewer and reveals far more than surface about the sitters in this combined image than had it been taken in color. The black and white image of Cary Grant from 1934 reveals why he became an iconic figure as a leading man until he voluntarily retired in his early 60s.

What is particularly good about the ROM exhibit is that it offers insight into the production of Vanity Fair. There is a series of covers on view, and also old issues, and even a mock-up of one of the magazines. Most startling, perhaps, is the Nov. 1932 cover of the magazine. It features a cartoon of Hitler's head superimposed on a swastika.

The AGO's Steichen images create a sense of nostalgia. They not only show us a period in which elegance ruled both women and men, but many of the personalities are familiar to us either from films, plays or books, and to some of us, in person. Many had an inordinate influence on the development of the arts way beyond the period covered in this exhibit.

At the same time, one cannot help feel that some viewers may be lost because so many of the people in Streichen's photographs are from a time to which they cannot relate. Yet, one is certain that they will, nevertheless, find themselves drawn to these images because Streichen knew how to capture not only the subject but also the onlooker with his inordinate sense of what it takes to create photographic art.

There is a series of five photographs at the AGO of former American-born actress Bessie Love doing the Charleston. One doubts that many, even older, visitors to the AGO will know her. Yet, she performed from the silent movie era well into the 1980s, having removed herself from the USA and settled in London to make a success there.

A dancer, who had a far greater influence on modern dance than anyone else, is Martha Graham. She was well in her 80s before she stopped performing, yet few today are aware of her importance. Her portrait in this show speaks of a woman of considerable character that remained in evidence even decades later.

Actors Gary Cooper, Fred Astaire, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, the sculptor Jacob Epstein, the writer Thomas Mann, the poet William Butler Yeats, playwright Eugene O'Neil, singer/actor Paul Robson, historian and writer H.G. Wells, director King Vidor, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright all count among the many portraits at the AGO that Steichen helped to bring to a wide audience in the pages of the Condé Nast publications.