Imogen Cunningham

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Imogen Cunnigham 1907

Imogen Cunningham (born April 12, 1883 in Portland / Oregon , † June 24, 1976 in San Francisco ) was an American photographer who is counted among the "classics" of modern photography of the 20th century. Cunningham was a founding member of group f / 64 . Stylistically, her works show a romantic-impressionistic conception up to the New Objectivity .

life and work

Imogen Cunningham, who first studied chemistry at Washington University, began photography as a student in 1901. She was inspired by the internationally known pictorialist Gertrude Käsebier . One of her first known photographs is a nude self-portrait taken on the university campus in 1905. Her final thesis, submitted to the University of Washington in 1907, concerned photochemical processes. She then worked in the photo studio of Edward S. Curtis , the Curtis Studio, in Seattle. At Curtis she learned to make platinum prints in the darkroom. A little later she received a scholarship that enabled her to attend the Technical University of Dresden in 1909 , which had opened a photography department a little earlier. In 1910 she visited Alfred Stieglitz in New York and Alvin Langdon Coburn . These contacts were a new source of inspiration for her. Shortly after her return to the United States, she opened her own studio in Seattle in 1910 and soon received national recognition for her portraits and pictorial works.

She later married the artist Roi Partridge . She had three children with him and the family moved to San Francisco, where she met Edward Weston . When Weston was asked to nominate pictures by exceptional American photographers for the 1929 Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart , he suggested eight close-ups of Cunningham's plants.

In 1932, together with Ansel Adams , John Paul Edwards , Sonya Noskowiak , Henry Swift , Willard van Dyke and Edward Weston, she founded the group f / 64 , which campaigned dogmatically for photography that was characterized by the greatest possible depth of field (symbolized by the name of the group which shows a very small aperture) and maximum level of detail.

Partridge and Cunningham separated in the mid-1930s, and she lived in Oakland until 1947 before moving back to San Francisco. She worked for magazines for years, had a portrait studio and also taught at the California School of Fine Arts . She has photographed personalities such as James Cagney , Cary Grant , Joan Blondell , Upton Sinclair and Lyle Tuttle . Her preferred subject, however, was still the plant world, although her plant photos have received little recognition. She dealt more intensively with portraits and nudes.

Cunningham took photos until shortly before her death. She died in San Francisco on June 23, 1976 at the age of 93.

membership

In 1967, Cunningham was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Exhibitions

literature

  • Imogen Cunningham - Photographs , Seattle, London 1970. ISBN 0-295-95452-3
  • Camera 10/1975 ( Swiss photo magazine)
  • Ideas without End. A Life in Photographs , San Francisco 1993. ISBN 0-8118-0357-0
  • Imogen Cunningham - Die Posie der Form Exhibition catalog of the "Fotografie Forum Frankfurt" (today: FFi Fotografie Forum International) Frankfurt / Main, Schaffhausen 1993. ISBN 3-905514-07-9
  • Body , Munich 1998. ISBN 3-89660-043-5

Web links

Commons : Imogen Cunningham  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Koschatzky: The art of photography. Technology, history, masterpieces . dtv, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-7010-0386-6 , p. 255
  2. ^ Walter Koschatzky: The art of photography. Technology, history, masterpieces . dtv, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-7010-0386-6 , p. 255
  3. ↑ site cs.washington.edu, accessed 5 November 2011
  4. ^ Website art-directory, accessed on November 5, 2011
  5. ^ Judith Fryer Davidov: Women's Camera Work: Self / body / other in American Visual Culture. Duke University Press 1998, ISBN 0-822-3206-73 , p. 379.
  6. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Book of Members ( PDF ). Retrieved April 2, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Cunningham, Imogen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Portland, Oregon , USA
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1976
Place of death San Francisco