Master photographers

Imogen Cunningham Portrait

Imogen Cunningham

Imogen Cunningham (Portland, Oregon, April 12, 1883 - San Francisco, June 24, 1976) was an American photographer whose work is oriented towards nature and portraiture.

He began his work in photography in 1901, as a student at the University of Washington studying photographic chemistry. With a camera she received from a correspondence course, she began to photograph on campus, photographing herself nude right there. She was inspired by the internationally known pictorialist photographer Gertrude Käsebier. During his college years, he worked in the photographic studio of Edward Sheriff Curtis, where he learned the platinotype technique and retouching negatives.

In 1909 he received a scholarship to study at the Dresden High School under the tutelage of Robert Luther, where he carried out a comparative study between the different methods of platinotype. During her stay in Europe, she visited Alvin Langdon Coburn and Alfred Stieglitz who once again inspired her. In 1910, after his return to the United States, he opened his own studio in Seattle and quickly gained recognition for his portraits and pictorial work. Her first portraits were commissioned by high society figures, which shows the prestige that the artist was building within the local community. At the same time, he established strong ties with the artistic world of the time. He took photos of artists such as Frida Kahlo and personalities from the world of sports.

The photographer discovered voluptuousness in the human body, going down in history as the first woman to sign portraits of nude men, breaking down the barriers between women and men at the beginning of the 20th century . Between the years 1920 and 1930, he dedicated a large part of his time to photographing the beauty and sensuality of plants and flowers.

In 1917, after marrying the artist and engraver Roi Partridge, she moved to California, where her three children were born. Cunningham never stopped photographing his closest environment while keeping abreast of new trends in art and photography through magazines such as Camera Work or Vanity Fair. Cunnigham was a co-founder in 1932 of the Group f/64 with Ansel Adams, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard van Dyke and Edward Weston, who wanted to represent "pure beauty (...) without interference of artistic effect"

Cunnighan signed his works with a seal of three Chinese syllables I-MO-GEN, which translated means ideas-without-end.

(Source Wikipedia)

Access their website

 

Which of my photos is my favourite? The one I'm going to do tomorrow.

Related Articles