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Imogen Cunningham
1883-1976
Imogen Cunningham is renowned as one of the greatest American women photographers.
She began photographing in 1901 while she was a student at the University of Washington. She was inspired by the work of Gertrude Kasebier, an internationally known pictorialist. After university, she took a part time job in Edward S. Curtis' studio in Seattle, who was famous for his remarkable documentation of the North American Indian, but made a living from his portraiture. At his studio, she learned to make platinum prints. In 1909 she won a scholarship for foreign study and attended photographic courses at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden, Germany. The school had recently revived its photographic department under the direction of Robert Luther, a photo scientist of international fame. While abroad she befriended Alvin Langdon Coburn in London and upon her return to America in 1910, Alfred Stieglitz. She found great inspiration in both of their work.
Returning to Seattle she opened her own studio and soon won national recognition not only for her portraits, but also for her pictorial work. She often found the beauty in the common, in things that were overlooked. In the late 1920s she moved to San Francisco and married Roi Partridge. In 1934, she joined f/64, the photographic group founded by Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke. It was a casual, informal group of friends who met occasionally in a gallery to discuss photography and show their work to one another and the public. The group was dedicated to the honest, sharply defined image in rejection of other photographers that were trying to imitate the fuzzy, impressionistic visuals of painters. By setting the aperture at f/64, their photographs achieved the ultimate quality in resolution and depth of field. In doing so, they were stating that photography was an art that was worthy of its own merits and shouldn't imitate other art mediums for the sake of acceptance. With this group she pioneered the renewal of photography on the West Coast.
During her life, Cunningham became critically acclaimed as one of the best living photographers and today her works are represented in private and public collections all over the world.
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