Imogen Cunningham

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Imogen Cunningham
black and white headshot of a young woman with wavy hair
Self portrait, 1909
Born(1883-04-12)April 12, 1883
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
DiedJune 23, 1976(1976-06-23) (aged 93)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Washington
Notable workMagnolia Blossom (1925)
Triangles (1928)
SpouseRoi Partridge (1915–1934)
Websiteimogencunningham.com

Imogen Cunningham (

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.[1]

Early life

Cunningham was born in Portland, Oregon to father Isaac Burns Cunningham and mother Susan Elizabeth Cunningham (née Johnson).[2][3][4] Her parents were from Missouri, though both of their families originally came from Virginia.[2] 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.[5]

She grew up in Seattle, Washington and attended the Denny School at 5th and Battery Streets in Seattle.[6]

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.[7][8] 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.[7] 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 the 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.[9]

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.[10] 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.[11] This grant allowed her to continue her studies at the Technische Hochschule (trans.: Technical University) in Dresden, Germany,[12] with Professor Robert Luther, 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.[13]

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

Dream (1910) by Cunningham

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 her 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."[14][15] 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."[14]

She became a sought-after photographer and exhibited at the

Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1913.[16] 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

External images
image icon Magnolia Blossom, c. 1925, at the Museum of Modern Art
image icon Triangles, 1928, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
image icon Two Callas, c. 1925

In 1917, the family moved to San Francisco, and in 1920 they moved to the

Mills College campus in Oakland, where Partridge taught art.[17]

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.[18]
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.[14] 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."[14] 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.[19] In an interview Cunningham mentioned that the f/64 group "is not only American, it is Western American. It isn't even American. It's 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."[20]

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 highlighted 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.[18] She continued with Vanity Fair until it stopped publication in 1936.

Later career

Street photography

A Rolleiflex used by Cunningham in the 1950s, on display at the Oakland Museum of California

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

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.

Awards

Personal life

On February 11, 1915, Cunningham married etching artist, printmaker and teacher Roi Partridge.[25] They had three sons: Gryffyd Partridge and twins Rondal Partridge and Padraic Partridge.[26][27] The couple divorced in 1934. Rondal's daughter, Meg Partridge, cataloged Cunningham's work.[28]

As of 1940, Cunningham lived in Oakland, California,[29] 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.[30][31]

Cunningham was named Imogen after the heroine of Shakespeare's Cymbeline.[32]

Works and publications

Books

Chronological by date of publication

Exhibition catalogs

Chronological by date of exhibition

Films, videos

See also

References

  1. ^ Blaustein, Jonathan (December 11, 2014). "An In-Depth History of Group f.64" (Includes slideshow). The New York Times. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  2. ^ a b "Isaac B Cunningham – United States Census, 1900". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  3. ^ "Isaac B Cunningham – United States Census, 1910". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  4. ^ "Isaac B Cunningham – United States Census, 1930". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  5. ^ Lorenz, Richard (1993). Imogen Cunningham: Ideas without End. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. p. 11.
  6. ^ "Eighth grade class standing on steps of the Denny School, Seattle, April 26, 1899" (Photograph). University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division. April 26, 1899. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  7. ^ a b Lorenz, Richard (1997). Imogen Cunningham: Portraiture. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. p. 9.
  8. ^ The Arrow of Pi beta Phi,, Summer 1970.
  9. ^ University of Washington Yearbook, 1908
  10. ^ O'Leary, Chandler; Spring, Jessica (2016). Dead feminists: historic heroines in living color. Seattle, WA: Sasquatch Books. pp. 72–7.
  11. ^ The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi, January 1913.
  12. ^ "Imogen Cunningham – Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Passenger Lists". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  13. ^ "Imogen Cunningham". Adobe Spark. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
  14. ^ a b c d Meltzer, Steve. "A Woman's Eye: How Imogen Cunningham Broke Through Gender Barriers to Help Redefine Modern Photography." Imaging Resource, August 23, 2013. Accessed February 7, 2020. https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/08/23/womans-eye-how-photographer-imogen-cunningham-broke-through-gender-barriers
  15. ^ Myers, William. "From Pictorialist to Modernist." The New York Sun, October 5, 2006. Accessed February 7, 2020. https://www.nysun.com/arts/from-pictorialist-to-modernist/41013/
  16. ^ "Imogen Cunningham, The First Magnolia, 1925 - Artwork 24427". Jackson Fine Art. Retrieved March 6, 2020.
  17. U-T San Diego
    . Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  18. ^ a b "Imogen Cunningham". International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. February 7, 2020. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
  19. ^ Conrad III, Barnaby (1977). Interviews with Master Photographers. Paddington Press.
  20. ^ "Imogen Cunningham." Aperture 11, no. 4 (1964): 135-174.
  21. ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter C" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved July 29, 2014.
  22. ^ "Imogen Cunningham receiving her Honorary Doctorate : 1968 CCAC Commencement". Vault. California College of the Arts. Retrieved July 10, 2020.
  23. ^ "Imogen Cunningham 1970 – US & Canada Competition Creative Arts – Photography". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  24. ^ "Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976)". International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. 2004. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
  25. ^ Washington, Marriage Records, 1854–2013
  26. ^ "Imogen Partridge – United States Census, 1920". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  27. ^ "Imogen Partridge – United States Census, 1930". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  28. ^ Beason, Tyrone (August 6, 2006). "Out of the Attic And into The Light". The Seattle Times. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  29. ^ "Imogen C* Partridge – United States Census, 1940". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  30. ^ "Imogen Partridge – United States Social Security Death Index". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  31. ^ "Imogen C Partridge – California, Death Index". FamilySearch. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  32. ^ "Biography". Imogen Cunningham. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  33. ^ "Imogen Cunningham: Platinum and Palladium". 21st Editions. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  34. ^ "Imogen Cunningham: Symbolist". 21st Editions. Retrieved March 8, 2015.

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Imogen Cunningham.
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