Imogen Cunningham
JOSÉ LIMÓN AT MILLS COLLEGE, 1939 © Imogen Cunningham Trust. All Rights Reserved.
Great photography, like great music, transcends time. It has the ability to outlast even the most current trends and is spoken about generation after generation. There is much beauty in Cunningham’s photography, something profound about the images that hold our attention and captivate us. The photos captured with the sole intention of paying tribute to simple subjects with sharp focus.
PAINTING AND WILLIAM HALLIMAN, 1964 © Imogen Cunningham Trust. All Rights Reserved
One woman mastered the art of capturing such images: Imogen Cunningham, born in 1883 in Portland Oregon. Known as one of the first professional female photographers in America, Cunningham is best known for her botanical photography, though she also produced images of nudes, industrial landscapes, and street scenes.
ANOTHER ARM, 1973 © Imogen Cunningham Trust. All Rights Reserved
Cunningham adapted an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the late 19th and early 20th centuries called Pictorialism—an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition, rather than the documentation of reality. Cunningham went on to become a member of the California-based group f/64, known for its dedication to the sharp focus rendition of simple subjects.
MARTHA GRAHAM 2, 1931JOSÉ LIMÓN AT MILLS COLLEGE, 1939 © Imogen Cunningham Trust. All Rights Reserved
DOCTOR'S HANDS, 2, 1974 © Imogen Cunningham Trust. All Rights Reserved
Another image of hands by Cunningham is BRAILLE, 1933. A pair of hands touching a paper with Braille. Cunningham places emphasis on the importance of the hands for individuals who are blind, as the braille characters are embossed in lines on paper and read by passing the fingers lightly over the manuscript.
Braille, 1933 © Imogen Cunningham Trust. All Rights Reserved
Cunningham once said, “Photography began for me with people. No matter what interest I have given [other things], I have never totally deserted the bigger significance in human life. As a document or record of personality, I feel that photography isn’t surpassed by any other graphic medium.”
In the 1920s and 1930s, Cunningham studied the nude. She approached the female and male body as she did with the organic plant life and made the nude images abstract by taking clear, close-up shots.
This would transform the bodies into organic forms and geometrical shapes as well as take them out of context. Not only would the perspective change the context of the photographs, but Cunningham would place emphasis on the play of light and shadow.
MERCE CUNNINGHAM, DANCER, 1957 © Imogen Cunningham Trust. All Rights Reserved.
Imogen Cunningham passed away in San Francisco, CA in 1976, leaving behind a legacy of amazing photography. Her work does exactly what profound photography should do: stimulate the viewers into thinking about the subjects or objects in her photos and the greater meaning behind them.
All work © Imogen Cunningham Trust. All rights reserved
