STORIES BEHIND THE IMAGE
Imogen's sharp memory remembered details of photographic projects decades later, and often relayed stories to us as she came across photographs in her own archive. Sharp, witty and often precise, she had a way of retelling stores that made them hard to forget! Along with her travel journals, notes, audio interviews and letters, we have organized some of these tales to capture a bit of her persective and personality.
In 1950, Imogen Cunningham's son Rondal introduced his 67-year-old photographer mother to 24-year-old sculptor Ruth Asawa. Despite the difference in their ages, the two quickly became close friends bonding over their many shared interests and belief that women didn't have to choose between family life and their art. Imogen championed Asawa's creativity and artistic work, while creating some of the most iconic photographs of the younger artist at work.
This portrait of Imogen's friend and photographer, Edward Weston, was taken at Point Lobos along the California coast. Imogen and Edward became friends shortly after Imogen and Roi moved to San Francisco in 1917.
Edward Weston photographed at Point Lobos time and again - Point Lobos was near his home on the Central Coast of California. Just a few hours south of the Bay Area, Imogen would travel down to see friends and also photograph. This negative was taken on Imogen’s 2 1/4 inch (negative size) Rollieflex camera, her most mobile camera.
Imogen took a series of José Limón at the amphitheater at Mills College in 1939. José Limón was invited to Mills for a dance summer session, where he created the early important choreographic work, Danzas Mexicanas. The amphitheater, as well as a noted neighborhood cactus garden, became the backdrop for a series of photographs of Limón by Imogen.
Gesture and dance were one of Imogen's favored subjects - she was drawn to photograph dancers, from student dancers at Mills College and the Cornish School, to Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Merce Cunningham and others. Often photographing dancers outside, Imogen took advantage of the sunlight to capture movement without additional articifial light.
Rondal and Padraic, her twin sons, born in 1917, became common subjects of Imogen's camera. Having just moved to California, the children became one of her primary subjects for a period of time. Her son Gryff was born the previous year, and as she said, "Well, I had three children in two years, and what could I do?"
Imogen never stopped photographing during this time,, but focused her camera on both her family and to the botanical world around her, making some of her most iconic images of her career.
"Three Dancers, Mills College" was photographed on the stage of the Mills College Amphitheater, capturing a student performance under the strong California sunlight. With her large format camera allowing only one exposure at a time, she had just one moment to release the shutter before needing to step back, remove the exposed negative from the camera back, and insert a fresh negative slide.
Cunningham's approach to botanical photography in the 1920s was a natural progression of her academic background. Having graduated from the University of Washington in 1907 with a degree in chemistry, she wrote her thesis on "Modern Processes of Photography" while working in the university's botany department, where she photographed plants for scientific documentation and earned money for her tuition.
After moving to California in 1917, her interest shifted from the soft, pictorialist photography of the day to sharply realized, graphically modern imagery using a log depth of field with sharply focused lenses and the full tonal range of the photographic process.