Imogen Cunningham :Agave #8
c. 1928
Inscribed with title on reverse and accompanied by a letter of authenticity by Rondal Partridge
Silver gelatin print, printed c. 1928
10 x 8 inches
“My interest in photography has something to do with the aesthetic, and that there should be a little beauty in everything.”
Practically adept and inherently inquisitive, Imogen Cunningham regarded her photography as an outlet to explore humour, biology, and the human experience. Oscillating between photographing portraits of sitters in her studio and the woods surrounding her home in Seattle, Cunningham afforded her photography an air of tranquillity, magic, and surrealism. Her interest in botany grew while she was studying chemistry at the University of Washington and in the 1920s, having moved to California, botanical photography became an increased focus of her output.
Honing in on the structural, elongated leaves of an Agave succulent, which Cunningham repeatedly photographed, she creates an image that is at once abstract and architectural. Taken in natural light, bright sunshine illuminates the outreached leaves, creating a series of highly contrasted patterns of shadow and light. These repeated patterns fold across the composition, weaving a detailed rhythm throughout the work. Agave leaves seemingly wrap around one another, protruding and receding in a display of optical illusion.
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At the outset of Cunningham’s career, Pictorialism was still the dominant style within photography. Many of her earlier works display the soft focus and sepia toning that characterises the Pictorial movement. It was not until later that Cunningham began to abandon the movement, in favour of ‘straight photography’, the core tenet of the f/64 group, which Cunningham co-founded.
Cunningham’s interest in botany and its artistic representation developed alongside the Modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s floral works. Both artists sought a sensuality in flowers, and a playful, inquisitive anthropomorphism. In this painting by O’Keeffe, ‘Jimson Weed White Flower No. 1,’ (1932), the artist’s manifest horticultural fascinations align closely with Cunningham’s through the delicate gradations of tone and effulgent light shining through the petals, as well as its anthropomorphic suggestions.
The photographer was the subject of numerous solo exhibitions throughout her career and posthumously, including at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Seattle Art Museum, and at the Versicherungskammer Kulturstiftung, Munich, pictured here.
Cunningham maintained relationships with contemporary artists throughout her life, including acclaimed Mexican artist Frida Khalo, whose portrait Cunningham took in 1931, and other leading photographers of the early twentieth century such as Edward Weston and Alfred Stieglitz.
“The fascinating thing about portraiture is that no one is alike.” Among the many modes of photography that Cunningham explored was portraiture. In turning her lens to people, she sought “the beauties of character, intellect, and spirit so as to be able to draw out [their] best qualities…” In this image, ‘Taiwan Leaves’, 1963, made later in her career, Cunningham playfully intertwined her interests in botany with formal experimentalism with portraiture.
B. United States1883-1976
Biography
Whereas Imogen Cunningham’s earlier work shows the influence of early twentieth-century Pictorialism, during the 1920s she started working in the geometric style of straight photography with the sharp linearity and vivid light of European Modernism. In 1932, she formed the group f/64 with Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, championing photography as an art form. Through her work, Cunningham sought to expose the visually profound in the mundane, focusing in particular on texture and light. She became particularly interested in photographing flowers and abstracting the shapes of the petals and leaves. In the 1940s, Cunningham turned to street photography and more traditional documentary photography, which continued to be a focus for the remainder of her career.
Born in 1883 in Oregon, United States, Cunningham studied at the University of Washington and the Technische Hochschule in Dresden, Germany. Cunningham is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her work has been the subject of exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Seattle Art Museum and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among others.