Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham (; April 12, 1883 – June 23, 1976) was an American photographer known for her botanical photography, nudes, and industrial landscapes. Cunningham was a member of the California-based Group f/64, known for its dedication to the sharp-focus rendition of simple subjects. Early life. Cunningham was born in Portland, Oregon to father Isaac Burns Cunningham and mother Susan Elizabeth Cunningham (née Johnson). Her parents were from Missouri, though both of their families originally came from Virginia. Cunningham was the fifth of 10 children. Although art was not included in the traditional school curriculum, as a child Cunningham  took art lessons on weekends and during vacations. She grew up in Seattle, Washington and attended the Denny School at 5th and Battery Streets in Seattle. In 1901, at the age of eighteen, Cunningham bought her first camera, a 4x5 inch view camera, via mail order from the American School of Art in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She entered the University of Washington in 1903, where she became a charter member of the Washington Alpha chapter of Pi Beta Phi fraternity for Women. It was not until 1906, while studying at the University of Washington in Seattle, that she was inspired to  take up photography again by an encounter with the work of Gertrude Käsebier. Her first photographs in 1906 were portraits taken with a 4-by-5-inch-format camera. With the help of her chemistry professor, Horace Byers, she began to study the chemistry behind photography while paying for her tuition by photographing plants for the botany department. In 1907, Cunningham graduated from University of Washington with a degree in chemistry. Her thesis was titled "Modern Processes of Photography." While there, she served as class vice-president, participated in the German Club and Chemistry Club, and was on the yearbook staff . Career. After graduating from college in 1907, Cunningham went to work for Edward S. Curtis in his Seattle studio, gaining knowledge about the portrait business and practical photography. Cunningham worked for Curtis on his project of documenting American Indian tribes for the book "The North American Indian", which was published in twenty volumes between 1907 and 1930. Cunningham learned the technique of platinum printing under Curtis's supervision and became fascinated by the process. Germany. In 1909, Cunningham was awarded the Pi Beta Phi Graduate Fellowship. This grant allowed her to continue her studies at the Technische Hochschule (trans.: Technical  University) in Dresden, Germany, with Professor , the founder of the university's "Institut für Photographie". There, she didn't take many photographs, but helped the photographic chemistry department find cheaper solutions for the expensive and rare platinum used for printing. In May 1910, she finished her paper, ""About the direct development of platinum paper for brown tones"", describing her process aiming to increase printing speed, improve clarity of highlights tones, and produce sepia tones. On her way back to Seattle, she met with photographers Alvin Langdon Coburn (in London) and Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Käsebier in New York. Seattle. In  Seattle, Cunningham opened a studio and later won acclaim for portraiture and pictorial work. Most of her studio work of this time consisted of sitters in their own homes, in her living room, or in the woods surrounding Cunningham's cottage. At one point she and her husband Roi Partridge, a Seattle artist and print maker, climbed up to the Alpine wild flower fields on Mt. Rainier where Roi posed nude as a mystical woodland faun. Her images were shown by the Seattle Fine Arts Society and were later published in the Seattle newspaper the "Town Crier", where they caused  a scandal due to a woman photographing a male nude. One critic wrote that her work was vulgar and charged her with being an immoral woman, but Cunningham stated that, "It didn't make a single bit of difference in my business. Nobody thought worse of me." Cunningham didn't revisit those photographs for another fifty-five years. Cunningham was also known to take nude photos of herself of which her granddaughter, Meg Partridge, said: "Her self-portraits really show her sense of humor, and she was smart about her career. She actively published her work in magazines and newspapers . She had a good eye, but she was a great editor. She knew how to edit her work, so what the world sees is an impressive selection of work." She became a sought-after photographer and exhibited at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1913. In 1914, Cunningham's portraits were shown at "An International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography" in New York. "Wilson's Photographic Magazine" published a portfolio of her work. The next year, she married Partridge. Between 1915 and 1920, Cunningham continued her work and had three children (Gryffyd, Rondal, who also became a photographer, and  Padraic) with Partridge. California. In 1917, the family moved to San Francisco, and in 1920 they moved to the Mills College campus in Oakland, where Partridge taught art. Cunningham refined her style, taking a greater interest in pattern and detail and becoming increasingly interested in botanical photography, especially flowers. Between 1923 and 1925 she carried out an in-depth study of the Magnolia flower. In 1933, Cunningham founded the California Horticultural Society in which her images were so detailed and clear that many horticulturalist and scientists used her images in their studies. Later in the decade she turned her attention  toward industry, creating several series of industrial landscapes in Los Angeles and Oakland. In 1929, Edward Weston nominated 10 of Cunningham's photographs (8 botanical, 1 industrial, and 1 nude) for inclusion in the "Film und Foto" exhibition. Her renowned "Two Callas" debuted in that exhibition. Cunningham once again changed direction, becoming more interested in the human form, particularly hands, and she was fascinated with the hands of artists and musicians. This interest led to her employment by "Vanity Fair", photographing stars without make-up. Group f/64. As Cunningham moved away from pictorialism to embrace sharp-focus photography she joined  with like-minded photographers, including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Willard Van Dyke. Together these individuals formed Group f/64 to promote a more relevant and meaningful style of photography, that rejected soft and pictorial and promoted what they called "pure or straight photography." They aimed to promote simple and straightforward photography technique that employed the smallest focal apertures (f/64 being the smallest) to create finely detailed images. In an interview Cunningham mentioned that the f/64 group "Is not only American, its Western American. It isn't even American. Its western." She also mentioned, "This does not mean that we all  used the small aperture, but we were for reality. That was what we talked about too. Not being phony, you know." Section::::"Vanity Fair". In 1932, Cunningham was invited to do some work in New York for "Vanity Fair." They commissioned her to make portraits of "ugly men" that were prominent in the arts. She created photographs that higlighted actors Wallace Beery and Spencer Tracy. Her work with Vanity Fair, Sunset and other magazines included portraits of Gertrude Stein, Minor White, James Broughton, Martha Graham, August Sander, Man Ray and Theodore Roethke. She continued with "Vanity Fair" until it stopped publication  in 1936. Later career. Street photography. In the 1940s, Cunningham turned to documentary street photography, which she executed as a side project while supporting herself with her commercial and studio photography. In 1945, Cunningham was invited by Ansel Adams to accept a position as a faculty member for the art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts. Dorothea Lange and Minor White joined as well. Mentorship. In 1964, Imogen Cunningham met the photographer Judy Dater while leading a workshop focusing on the life and work of Edward Weston in Big Sur Hot Springs, California which later became the  Esalen Institute. Dater was greatly inspired by Cunningham's life and work. Cunningham is featured in one of Dater's most popular photographs, "Imogen and Twinka at Yosemite", which depicts elderly Cunningham encountering nude model Twinka Thiebaud behind a tree in Yosemite National Park. The two shared an interest in portraiture and remained friends until Cunningham's death in 1976. Three years later, Dater published Imogen "Cunningham: A Portrait," containing interviews with many of Cunningham's photographic contemporaries, friends, and family along with photographs by both Dater and Cunningham. In 1973, her work was exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles photography  festival in France through the group exhibition: "Trois photographes américaines, Imogen Cunningham, Linda Connor, Judy Dater." Personal life. On February 11, 1915, Cunningham married etching artist, printmaker and teacher Roi Partridge. They had three sons: Gryffyd Partridge and twins Rondal Partridge and Padraic Partridge. The couple divorced in 1934. Rondal's daughter, Meg Partridge, cataloged Cunningham's work. As of 1940, Cunningham lived in Oakland, California, though she had studios in various locations in San Francisco. Cunningham continued to take photographs until shortly before her death at age 93, on June 23, 1976, in San Francisco, California. Cunningham was named  Imogen after the heroine of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline." Works and publications. Books. "Chronological by date of publication" Exhibition catalogs. "Chronological by date of exhibition"