CUNNINGHAM, Imogen

About the US-American photographer Imogen CUNNINGHAM (1883-1976)

Imogen CUNNINGHAM is considered one of the 'classics' of 20th century modern photography. She was a founding member of the f/64 group and her works show a stylistically Romantic-Impressionist approach through to New Objectivity. She began taking photographs as a student in 1901. She was inspired by the internationally renowned pictorialist Gertrude KÄSEBIER. One of her first known photographs is a nude self-portrait taken on the university grounds in 1905. After completing her studies in chemistry, she worked in the photo studio of Edward S. CURTIS in Seattle. There she learned to make platinum prints in the darkroom. Shortly afterwards, she received a scholarship that enabled her to attend the Technische Hochschule Dresden in 1909. In 1910, she visited Alfred STIEGLITZ in New York and Alvin Langdon COBURN. After her return to the USA, she opened her own studio in Seattle in 1910. As a result of her move to San Francisco, she met Edward WESTON. When he was asked to nominate pictures by exceptional American photographers for the 1929 Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, he suggested eight close-ups of plants by Imogen CUNNINGHAM. In 1932, together with Ansel ADAMS, John Paul EDWARDS, Sonya NOSKOWIAK, Henry SWIFT, Willard van DYKE and Edward WESTON, she founded the f/64 group, which was committed to photography characterized by the greatest possible depth of field and maximum attention to detail. She worked for magazines for many years, had a portrait studio and also taught at the California School of Fine Arts. Her preferred subject was plants, for which she received little recognition. She therefore focused more intensively on portraits and nudes. She continued to take photographs until shortly before her death; Imogen CUNNINGHAM died in San Francisco in 1976 at the age of 93.

Photo books with works by Imogen CUNNINGHAM

• 'Photographs' (1970); 'Imogen Cunningham 1910-1973' (1974); 'A Portrait' (1979); 'Selected Texts and Bibliography' (1992); 'Seeing Straight: The F.64 Revolution in Photography' (1992); 'Ideas without End. A Life in Photographs' (1993); 'The Posie of Form' (1993); 'Portraiture' (1997); 'Körper' (1998); 'On the Body' (1999); 'Imogen Cunningham: 1883-1976' (2001); 'Flora' (2001); 'Mother's Days' (2002); 'Defining Modernism: Group f.64 ' (2002); 'Imogen Cunningham' (2012); 'Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography' (2014); 'A Retrospective' (2020);

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