Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) -

below excerpted from: Ideas Without End by Richard Lorenz

Imogen Cunningham was a pioneer of modern twentieth-century photography, an artist whose work significantly contributed to the acceptance of the medium as an art form.

As an early but undeclared feminist, Cunningham was one of the first women to make a successful living as a photographer. She established a professional studio in Seattle in 1910, and during this early period, she created not only commercial portraiture but a body of pictorialist imagery often based on poetic and allegorical themes - although her use of nude male and femal figures was considered scandalous. After moving to California in 1917, Cunningham developed a keener, more penetrating vision, exemplified by her botanical and nude figure studies of the 1920s. Her experiments with multiple imagery and double exposure throughout the 1920s and 1930s defined her as the most sophisticated, experimental, and Europe-oriented photographer on the West Coast.

Imogen Cunningham chronicles the photographer's friendships with Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, and Doroghea Lange, as well as her portrait sessions with leading artists, musicians, and dancers. Her stylistic evolution toward a humanistic, documentary street photography and the development of her signature environmental portraiture are well illustrated by many compelling and eloquent images. More than 120 duotone plates reveal the extraordinary and eclectic range of her landscapes, architectural studies, still lifes, and portraiture.

By the time of her death in 1976 at the age of ninety three, Cunningham had become a living legend. Photography had come to be taken as a serious art form, and Imogen was its reigning queen.

(above: excerpt taken from Imogen Cunningham, Ideas without End by Richard Lorenz. Copyright 1993 by Richard Lorenz. Published by Chronicle Books, 275 Fifth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103)

Imogen Cunningham is indeed one of the most influential twentieth-century photographers along with many other masters that were influencing the artistic side of photography in a time when it was only considered a technical trade. It is only pertinent that photographers today follow her path and the other masters path to demonstrate the artistic side of photography less it take a ride back to a meaningless technical trade, point and shoot photography. A quote from Imogen: "One must be able to gain an understanding at short notice and close range of the beauties of character, intellect and spirit so as to be able to draw out the best qualities and make them show in the outer aspect of the sitter. To do this one must not have a too pronounced notion of what constitutes beauty in the external, and, above all, must not worship it. To worship beauty for its own sake is narrow and one surely cannot derive from it that aesthetic pleasure which comes from finding beauty in the commonest things." Her belief in this one thing is what accelerated her photography past those who could not see past the technical aspects of the art.

How do we use this quote, lesson, in today's aspect of fine art nudes? I think we should start by not focusing so much upon sexualizing the nude. The fine art nudes that Imogen Cunningham took were not geared towards stimulating the senses in a sexual manner. They were not erotic and nor did she have the intention of making erotic or sexual stimulating nude images. She did not shoot men or women merely for their physical beauty because that is not what she worshipped. She worshipped the art.

Cunningham's quest to have simple compositions, to direct the viewer to the point of interest more effectively, still carries weight in today's world. While her friend, Edward Weston, was involved in simple compositions to the point of hardly having a composition at all, Cunningham took this to another level and led the viewer to a more rounded point of view composition, a beginning, a middle and an end. Her thoughts of non cluttered backgrounds and settings are used throughout photography today. Hardly do you ever see a photo hanging in a gallery where a background was so haphazard that your eyes don't know where to settle. Cunningham has taught us how to see things clearly and present them to the viewer clearly with no doubt as to where the eye should land.

A review by Edward Weston on Imogen Cunninghams exhibition at Carmel by the Sea in 1925: "She uses her medium, photography, with honesty, - no tricks, no evasion: a clean cut presentation of the thing itself, the life of whatever is seen through her lens, - that life within the obvious external form. With unmistakable joy in her work, with the unclouded eyes of a real photographer, knowing what can, and cannot, be done with her medium, she never resorts to technical stunts, nor labels herself a would-be-third-rate painter. Imogen Cunningham is a photographer! A rarely fine one."

From 1932 to 1935 Cunningham was employed by the Condé Nast publication Vanity Fair to take photographs of several celebrity types in the Hollywood area. Due to Cunningham's distain for glamorous type photographs she wrote to Vanity Fair concerned that they may persuade her to not follow her vision by taking real life photographs of real people. "I am not certain to what extent it would be possible to pierce the shell of artificiality with which the film stars surround themselves, especially if the photographs would have to please them and their managers first before you could use them. I am presuming that you would wish me to get as far away as possible from the type of portraiture which fills the movie magazines of the day. I should not be interested unless I might be free to try and get more character than this into the work." Donald Freeman, the then managing editor, replied: "The Hollywood venture, about which we have been corresponding, is in the nature of an experiment. I agree with you that it is indeed almost impossible to pierce the shell of artificiality but our policy has always been to please ourselves, and we emphatically refrain from submitting proofs to managers, press agents, studios, or even to the sitters. You are correct in assuming that we would favor what one does not see in the motion picture magazines."

Imogen Cunningham helped found the now famous group, f.64, the name derived from the smallest aperture available on a large format camera. f.64 allows you to get an abundant depth of field with amazing detail. The original members of f.64 were Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, and Edward Weston.

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Group f/64 published the following manifesto:

''The name of this Group is derived from a diaphragm number of the photographic lens. It signifies to a large extent the qualities of clearness and definition of the photographic image which is an important element in the work of members of this Group.

''The chief object of the Group is to present in frequent shows what it considers the best contemporary photography of the West; in addition to the showing of the work of its members, it will include prints from other photographers who evidence tendencies in their work similar to that of the Group.

''Group f/64 is not pretending to cover the entire of photography or to indicate through its selection of members any deprecating opinion of the photographers who are not included in its shows. There are great number of serious workers in photography whose style and technique does not relate to the metier of the Group.

''Group f/64 limits its members and invitational names to those workers who are striving to define photography as an art form by simple and direct presentation through purely photographic methods. The Group will show no work at any time that does not conform to its standards of pure photography. Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form. The production of the "Pictorialist," on the other hand, indicates a devotion to principles of art which are directly related to painting and the graphic arts.

''The members of Group f/64 believe that photography, as an art form, must develop along lines defined by the actualities and limitations of the photographic medium, and must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of a period and culture antedating the growth of the medium itself.

The Group will appreciate information regarding any serious work in photography that has escaped its attention, and is favorable towards establishing itself as a Forum of Modern Photography.

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As you can tell, Imogen Cunningham, the Queen (as she was lovingly called) is one of our most important photographers to study, as she was an integral part of transforming photography into an art form. For the purist, you will find your choir. For the digital photographer, you will understand the art form and where it derived from. For the glamour photographer, you will learn to see more realistically.

Related artists to study would be all aforementioned photographers that belonged to the f.64 group. Without this group or the foundation of this group many teachings in photography would probably be lost, and so would we. f.64 taught the world the art of photography.

© 2004 Zoe Wiseman for Community Zoe
Not to be published without prior written permission from the author.
All photographs depicted herein are © Imogen Cunningham

Bibliography:

On the Body. Imogen Cunningham. Bulfinch, 1998

Portraiture. Imogen Cunningham. Bulfinch, 1998

Flora. Imogen Cunningham. Bulfinch, 1996

The Modernist Years. Imogen Cunningham. Treville, 1993

Ideas Without End. Imogen Cunningham. Chronicle, 1993

Imogen Cunningham. Imogen Cunningham. G.K. Hall, 1992

Portrait of Imogen. Imogen Cunningham. Pacific Pictures, 1987