About Imogen Cunningham:
Known for: photographs of people and plants
Dates: April 12, 1883 - June 24, 1976
Occupation: photographer
Quote: "To have real work is the only way to live."
More About Imogen Cunningham:
Born in Portland Oregon to a family that was not well off, Imogen Cunningham knew she wanted to be a photographer from the age of eighteen. She studied at the University of Washington, Seattle, but could not major in photography, so she took up chemistry, writing her thesis on the science of photography.
She studied with Edward S. Curtis and then in Germany before beginning her own studio in 1910 in Seattle. She moved to San Francisco in 1917 and began teaching at Mills College in Oakland in 1920. Her initial natural style was like that of Gertrude Käsebier. Cunningham caused quite a stir in Seattle with a series of photographs of naked families in the woods around Seattle.
Married in 1915, Imogen Cunningham balanced her photography with and teaching with caring for her three sons. She took up plant photography which allowed her to take photographs while watching her children, resulting in her "plant studies" from 1922 to 1929.
Imogen Cunningham was one of seven photographers, including Ansel Adams, who founded Group f/64, helping to establish a style specific to the U.S. West Coast, and remained a member from 1932 to 1935.
From 1931, Cunningham began working for Vanity Fair, and in 1934 took some work in New York, getting a divorce in the process. She maintained her residence in San Francisco, despite her New York assignment. She opened a professional portrait studio in San Francisco, and concentrated mostly on photographing individuals.
Imogen Cunningham was not well known until the 1960s and 1970s. Two books were published (1970 and 1974) with her photographs, and her work began to succeed in galleries. In 1977, herself 92 years old, she started a project of portraits of people in or close to their 90s, published in 1977 as After Ninety. She had died the previous year, 1976, in San Francisco.
Background, Family:
- Mother: Susan Elizabeth Cunningham
- Father: Isaac Burns Cunningham
- Siblings: Imogen was the fifth of ten children
Education:
- University of Washington, 1907, chemistry
- Seattle public schools
- Technische Hochschule, Dresden, photographic chemistry, 1909-1910
Marriage, Children:
- husband: Roi Partridge (married 1915, divorced 1934; painter)
- children: three sons
- her son Rondal also became a photographer
