Transforming Practices:

Imogen Cunningham’s Botanical Studies of the 1920s

Caroline Marsh Spring Semester 2014

Dr. Juliet Bellow, Art History

University Honors in Art History

Imogen Cunningham worked for decades as a professional photographer, creating predominantly portraits and botanical studies. In 1932, she joined the influential Group f.64, a group of West Coast photographers who worked to pioneer the concept of “Straight Photography,” a movement that emphasized the use of sharp focus and high contrast. Members of Group f.64 included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, whose works have since overshadowed other photographers in the group. Cunningham has been marginalized in histories of Group f.64, and in the history of photography in general, despite evidence of her development of many important photographic practices during her lifetime. This paper builds on scholarship about Group f.64, using biographical information and analysis of her photographs, to argue that Cunningham influenced more of the ideas in the group than has been recognized, especially in her focus on the simplification of form and the creation of compelling compositions. Focusing on her botanical studies, I show that many of the ideas of f.64 existed in her oeuvre before the formal creation of the group. Analysis of her participation in the group reveals her contribution to developments in art photography in that period, and shows that her gender played a key role in historical accounts that downplay her significant contributions to f.64. Marsh 2

Imogen Cunningham became well known in her lifetime as an independent and energetic photographer from the West Coast, whose personality defined her more than the photographs she created or her contribution to the developing straight photography movement in California.

However, her largely overlooked oeuvre offers a view into a vital moment in the history of

American photography: the development of Group f.64 and the “straight” photography movement in the west, a photography group that formed in California in 1932 and included such recognizable names as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. F.64—whose name refers to a specific diaphragm in the camera that gives the photographer the clearest, most focused image—came together in order to promote the ideals of straight photography, a movement that emphasized the use of sharp focus and high contrast in order to create “pure photography.” Their concept of pure photography was one that was not influenced by other media. Straight photography developed in opposition to the pictorialist movement, a photographic movement focused on bringing painterly qualities to photography.

Histories of photography generally do not accord Cunningham much credit for the straight photography aesthetic developed by members of Group f.64; often the development of these concepts is primarily credited to Edward Weston as well as other male photographers in the group. This occurs despite the fact that her work highly influenced other photographers and that she played a significant part in developing the f.64 aesthetic. Reconsidering Cunningham’s work of the 1920s with a particular emphasis on her botanical studies, I will argue that her ideas proved crucial to the practices of Group f.64. At the same time, I will explore her decision to not always adhere to the prescribed methods of the group—an action that indicates a certain independence she felt from her contemporaries as she explored the possibilities of photographic technique. This independence is, again, embodied in her botanical studies, which represent the Marsh 3 way in which she expanded upon the associations of a subject traditionally viewed as “feminine” through the aesthetic of “straight” photography. These works also clearly show Cunningham’s development of practices espoused by Group f.64 prior to the formation of the group.

Considering the work she created leading up to and after her period of focus on botanical studies shows how this experience with photographing the organic forms of flowers represented an important shift in her photographic practice.

Surveying the scholarship concerning Imogen Cunningham and f.64 helps to give a clear picture of why Cunningham and her influence on the group largely have been marginalized. The most extensive information available pertaining to her artistic contribution generally exists in the scholarship surrounding the history of the f.64. This group has been hailed by many photography historians, such as Beaumont Newhall, as one of the most prevailingly influential photography groups in the United States during the twentieth century. In the forward to Seeing Straight:

Group f.64, Newhall writes that “our appreciation of ‘straight photography,’ which has continued strongly to the present time, is clearly due to the example of Group f.64.”1 It is clear from this assertion that Group f.64 influenced photography for generations, and therefore the importance of Cunningham’s contribution to the group needs further exploration.

The group wrote a short manifesto in 1932 explaining that the name originated in the f- stop they found gave them the most clarity in their photographs.2 With a great emphasis on clarity and definition, the group wrote that its members were “striving to define photography as an art-form by a simple and direct presentation through purely photographic methods.”3 Their

1 Heyman, Therese Thau, ed. Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography, (Oakland, California: The Oakland Museum, 1992), IX. 2 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 53. 3 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 53. Marsh 4 focus on this aesthetic is often seen as a reaction against pictorialist photography, which is characterized by a painterly approach to photography using a soft focus lens.4 In the early 1900s, art photography diverged in two different directions, with one group adhering to pictorialist goals and another developing into straight photography. Pictorialists believed that their photographs must utilize the principles of painting in order to make them into true works of art.5 In a different approach, straight photographers believed that photography must develop a separate vocabulary that uses the unique qualities of photography, such as the sharp focus in a maximum depth of field, in order to make art photographs.6 Though the term originated in the 1880s as a way to reference unmanipulated photographs, it shifted to mean photography that emphasizes contrast and sharp focus and became the prominent art photography aesthetic into the 1970s.7 These artists saw their photographs as works of art, not necessarily as means of documentary. In a sense, this allows photography to evolve into a unique and separate medium, one that no longer must rely on other art forms for an artistic vocabulary.

In “Perspective on Seeing Straight,” from Seeing Straight: Group f.64, Therese Thau

Heyman implies that the concepts that Weston developed and that later became the focus of the group acted as a reaction to pictorialism. This was his attempt to move away from this romantic style and toward his preferred style of “straight” photography. In her contribution to this book, entitled “f.64 and Modernism,” Naomi Rosenblum argues that the group found influence in the modernist aesthetic of straight photography originating in Germany, France, and photographers

4 "Straight photography," in The Oxford Companion to the Photograph (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 5 "Group f.64," in The Oxford Companion to the Photograph (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 6 "Group f.64," in The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. 7 “Straight photography,” in The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Marsh 5 from the East Cost of the United States.8 Rosenblum explains that the flattening of forms and the focus on abstraction found in the work of Group f.64 originated in these modernist ideas.9 What the west coast straight photographers, especially Group f.64, contributed to the development of straight photography was their unique choice of subject matter.10 Whereas the straight photographers before them focused on machinery and the cityscape, Western photographers turned their focus to organic forms such as landscapes and flowers.

The scholarship on Group f.64 tends to treat Edward Weston as something of a “father figure,” drawing heavily on Weston’s work and theory in analysis of the group despite the fact that other photographers played active roles in the group. The impression a reader receives upon reading this scholarship is that Weston developed these ideas independently; for example,

Beaumont Newhall, one of the first authors of a comprehensive history of photography, writes,

“Weston was very independent and not particularly interested in the group and its progress.”11 It almost seems as if a cult has formed around the idea of Weston as the leader of this group of forward thinking west coast photographers. This over-emphasis on Weston makes it easy to overlook and to obscure the other photographers who worked with the group despite their contributions to the practices and aesthetics of the group. Even more than the other members of the group, Cunningham often is relegated to a secondary status; she is often seen as simply following the others, perhaps “independent-minded” enough to operate as something of an entertaining addition to the characters of Group f.64, but nothing more. In writings about Group f.64, she is mentioned only when writers seem to feel compelled to point out the group’s

8 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 34. 9 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 34. 10 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 34. 11 Beaumont Newhall, “Forward,” in Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography, ed. Therese Thau Heyman (Oakland, California: The Oakland Museum, 1992), VIII. Marsh 6 accepting attitude toward women—as in Heyman’s section on women in the group.12 This lack of concern for Cunningham as an artist in her own right overlooks the significant fact that her work moved toward a form of straight photography prior to the creation of f.64, and thus seems somewhat independent of the influence of Weston and other members of the group.

When discussed outside the specific context of f64, Cunningham is often viewed primarily in the context of her gender rather than the contributions she made to photographic practice. She figures prominently in the chapter “Pleasures of the Amateur, 1890-1915” in

Naomi Rosenblum’s A History of Women Photographers, in which the author uses

Cunningham’s botanical studies to argue that amateur female photographers frequently depicted flowers with decorative intentions, while men more frequently photographed flowers for scientific purposes.13 However, in the context of a broader history of women photographers, greater emphasis is placed on her portraits: entry into the profession through the making of portraits was a path taken by many nineteenth- and twentieth-century female photographers.14 As

Rosenblum notes, women photographers were particularly active in the western United States;

Cunningham figures prominently in this discussion because of her success as a professional photographer and her modernist focus on form.15 Her membership in the f.64 group also merits discussion in Rosenblum’s book, but only specifically to explain one way in which Cunningham earned an income through photography.16 Rosenblum takes an important step in her inclusion of

Cunningham in the history of women photographers, but she fails to truly express the importance of Cunningham to the overall history of photography.

12 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 28. 13 Naomi Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers, 3rd ed (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2010), 99. 14 Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers, 152. 15Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers, 162. 16 Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers, 168-169. Marsh 7

Scholarship focusing entirely on Imogen Cunningham and her career takes yet a different approach and yields a rather divergent image of the photographer, interpreting her work as a direct outgrowth of her personal life. Richard Lorenz, author of four books about her life and work, provides a great deal of information about her career and projects, but views the work primarily through the lens of her biography. The first of the four, Ideas Without End (1993) divides her life into five periods; Lorenz discusses the art she created during these periods and how developments in her artistic practice relate to aspects of her personal life. This resource is an invaluable window into her life and the events which may have influenced her work, but also a call to give Cunningham a place in the overall discourse that has abandoned her for so long. He does so by pointing to her development of important ideas and the influence of her work on many West Coast photographers. Lorenz makes it clear that too little emphasis has been given to the impact of Cunningham’s work on the broader world of photographic practice in the US during the mid-twentieth century.

Lorenz’s other books focus on specific aspects of Cunningham’s body of work, in something of an extended version of his first book’s chapters. Most important to this paper is

Imogen Cunningham: Flora, as it focuses on her botanical studies, which she created throughout her life. In this book, he explains how her botanical studies are often the most critically accepted for their assumed artistic value. Imogen Cunningham: Portraiture operates as a similar approach to analyzing Cunningham’s portraiture; Lorenz asserts in this book that portraiture can convey information about the photographer herself as well as the sitter. His final book which assumes this method of writing about her work is Imogen Cunningham: On the Body. In the introduction to this book Lorenz first focuses on arguing that Cunningham’s nudes display a “pure” goal Marsh 8 rather than one of voyeurism and sensuality, and that her nudes portray her focus on forms which comes from her interest in the modernist aesthetic.

Other works by Lorenz concerning Imogen Cunningham are an exhibition catalog and

Imogen Cunningham: Selected Text and Bibliography, written along with Amy Rule and which contains many of the artist’s writings. It includes an article she wrote for her sorority’s magazine entitled “Photography as a Profession for Women,” in which Cunningham asserts her view that photography represents an opportunity for women to work professionally without detracting from their more traditional roles in the home. Though she wrote this before having children, it might help explain the direction her work took upon having children and why she chose to represent the subjects she did. It also includes her thesis after studying in Dresden, which helps to complete an image of her scientific interests and understanding of the mechanical processes of photography. This is an invaluable resource as it includes many original documents, including some personal letters, which inform the reader of different aspects of Cunningham’s life. Rule writes in the introduction that she hopes this book will result in a greater interest in

Cunningham’s works and provide a point from which to push off for future scholars.

Similar to Rule and Lorenz’s reference book on Cunningham, Homage to Imogen, an entire issue from Camera dedicated to Cunningham, offers two lengthy interviews with

Cunningham later in her life which offer a window into the artist’s views of her own work as well as contemporary photography. These interviews might help in understanding the ideas behind some of Cunningham’s works but add little to the scholarly discourse which seems so lacking. Another article which adds more in background information than scholarly discussion is

Charles P. LeWarne’s “Imogen Cunningham in Utopia” from The Pacific Northwest Quarterly.

This article offers a short explanation of Cunningham’s childhood as part of the Puget Sound Co- Marsh 9 operative Colony. In it, LeWarne writes about her recollections of the colony as well as her father and his possible role in the community. This article contributes information of how far back Cunningham’s interest in botany reaches because it describes her possession of a small plot in the community garden where she grew flowers which she claimed to distinctly remember later in her life.17

In this paper, I focus on her work as well as her personal life in order to argue that she developed important practices for straight photographers, particularly in Group f.64. Other writers have contributed short analyses of Cunningham’s works or of her life, usually as a call to other scholars to look into her career as a photographer more seriously. In “An Integration of

Life and Work: Imogen Cunningham 1883-1976” from the April 1984 Southwest Art, for example, Susan Ehrens writes about the lack of critical acceptance of Cunningham because many people knew her for her personality rather than her photography.18 Ehrens calls on art historians to liberate Cunningham from this sort of personality fame but artistic obscurity. Taking up

Ehrens’ call for an art-historical reframing of Cunningham’s work, I look to her botanical studies to yield a new image of the artist, one that moves her from the periphery of the history of photography to the center of a vibrant community of artists. Through these works, I argue, she made a significant contribution to the ideas in Group f.64 and therefore influenced photographers for decades.

My view of Cunningham’s botanical studies thus differs from the binary oppositions upon which Rosenblum relies when she separates amateur female photographers’ “decorative” images of flowers from men’s “scientific” purposes.19 Rosenblum wrote that the decorative

17 Charles P. LeWarne, “Imogen Cunningham in Utopia,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 74.2 (April 1983), 88. 18 Susan Ehrens, “An Integration of Life and Work: Imogen Cunningham 1883-1976,” Southwest Art (U.S.A.) 13 (April 1984), 64-67. 19 Naomi Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers, 3rd ed (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2010), 99. Marsh 10 images of flowers were popular in both the United States and Europe, and the requirement that the photographer creates an interesting composition through arrangement of the flowers indicates a push toward photography as an art form, which she sees as separate from the use of the medium in science.20 However, in Cunningham’s case, this dynamic is broken down. My discussion of Cunningham’s botanical studies will bring together biographical information with attention to the historical context and analysis of the works themselves to show how she breaks the binaries of science and art photography.

While Cunningham’s botanical studies situate her in a tradition of amateur female photographers, her interest in plants can be traced back to her childhood and early career. When exactly Cunningham’s interest in photographing flowers first manifested remains a difficult question to answer, but Cunningham leads us to believe that flowers seem to represented significant moments of growth and experience throughout her life. A rare look into her childhood offered by Charles P. LeWarne in “Imogen Cunningham in Utopia” offers what is perhaps her earliest memory of interacting with flowers. When Cunningham was four, her father moved his family to the Puget Sound Co-operative colony in Washington, where she recalls the landscape, the little house in which her family lived, and the plot of garden she held responsibility for as part of her kindergarten class.21 In her garden, Cunningham chose to grow pansies.22 The significance of this childhood experience lies in the way it depicts Cunningham as intellectually interested in flowers. Clearly Cunningham, in retrospect, found it beneficial to portray herself as always interested in botany as a way of formulating her public persona. Perhaps she chose to do this specifically to set herself apart from other female photographers by claiming a more

“scientific” interest in plant forms. However, it is important to remember that inspiration for her

20 Rosenblum, A History of women Photographers, 99. 21 Charles P. LeWarne, “Imogen Cunningham in Utopia,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 74.2 (April 1983), 88. 22 LeWarne, “Imogen Cunningham in Utopia,” 88. Marsh 11 botanical studies came from both the tradition of female amateur photographers and from scientific interest.

Cunningham began pursuing photography during her Second year at the University of

Washington when a professor advised her to study chemistry and scientific photography, and in this experience she was first exposed to photographing plant forms.23 Her first exposure to photography was working in the botany department making slides for Professor T.C. Frye as part of her course of study.24 Perhaps in these early slide photographs she first considered the value of straight photography, as in scientific photography the most important aspect is depicting the forms as clearly as possible, without any specific focus on composition or aesthetics. In addition, her scientific experience with botanical photography allowed her to understand better the basic forms in different flowers, but also developed her understanding of photography as a function of science. However, the moment in which she shifted from seeing flowers as artistic forms rather than simply scientific ones likely comes later. Still, the collision of her interests—photography and flowers at the University of Washington—seems a likely place of inspiration for her later work in botanical studies. Since her earliest knowledge of photography came from the experience of working to create botany slides, her return to botanical studies later in life seems unsurprising and almost logical. Her practice of the medium began with this subject, and her later return to the medium demonstrates the influence of her early experiences throughout her life.

After completing her work at the University of Washington and writing her thesis

“Modern Processes of Photography,” Cunningham continued to focus on the more scientific aspects of photographic practice. By this time, she had acquired her first camera from the

23 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 13. 24 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 13. Marsh 12

American School of Art and Photography and began processing her own images in a converted woodshed at her father’s home.25 However, her interaction with the scientific aspects of photography did not come to an end. She worked in the Edward S. Curtis studio, where she learned “the mechanics of retouching negatives and printing them on platinum paper” from

Adolf F. Muhr, though she rarely actually interacted with Curtis.26 She worked for two years at

Curtis’s studio before receiving funding from her sorority and the Washington Women’s Club to study abroad.27 Cunningham chose to study in Dresden at the Technische Hochschule under

Robert Luther in the photochemistry department.28 In Dresden she dedicated most of her studies to technical work, completing a thesis titled “About Self-Production of Platinum Papers for

Brown Tones” that was published in Photographische Rundschau und Photographisches

Centralblatt.29 This paper focused on the home manufacture of photo paper using various recipes and the results she received with each one.30 In Dresden, she also saw the International

Photographic Exhibition of 1909, which featured the most famous photographers of Europe and the United States.31 These photographers represented a variety of styles, but straight photography had developed in Europe at the time, and Cunningham was therefore likely exposed to it in the earlier years of her artistic development. It is highly possible that Cunningham was introduced through this exhibition to some of the modernist concepts which were developing in Europe during this time which she would later embody in her nude and botanical studies.

Cunningham’s early style recalls the pictorialist tradition. Her early named influences explain this focus on pictorialism in Cunningham’s early works, before she developed into her

25 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 13. 26 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End,13. 27 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 13. 28 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 13. 29 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 14. 30,Amy Rule and Richard Lorenz, ed, Imogen Cunningham: Selected Text and Bibliography, (Oxford: Clio, 1992), 41-46. 31 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 14. Marsh 13 later straight photographical style. Cunningham cites the works of Gertrude Käsebier as influential to her pictorial interests, and when she opened her first studio upon her return to

Seattle this influence is clear, as she “claimed to be the only photographer creating expressive portraiture in Seattle,” according to Lorenz.32 Her early photographs followed the pictorialist tradition under the influence of Camera Work and the photo-secession movement, which worked to achieve recognition of photography as an art form in the early twentieth century, just before

Cunningham entered into University and began her own pursuit of the medium.33 Cunningham worked for some years as a portraitist while also establishing ties with the artistic community of

Seattle, particularly through her membership to the Society of Seattle Artists, a group of painters and printmakers.34 During this time, she created primarily portraits and allegorical images along the pictorialist tradition, representing the broad influence of Stieglitz’s Camera Work in moving her away from the more direct scientific style she knew well.

An image that embodies this pictorialist spirit is The Dream [fig. 1], a portrait made in

1910 of Clare Shepard.35 The soft focus of the image combined with the misty atmosphere recalls both Alfred Stieglitz’s pictorialist images and the portraits Gertrude Käsebier. In fact, the positioning of Cunningham’s subject matches the positioning Käsebier’s portrait titled Miss N

[fig. 2] from 1903. Both subjects sit with their shoulders turned slightly away from the camera but with their face toward the camera. Cunningham’s composition possesses a more intimate quality, however, because the subject’s eyes are partially closed and she does not return the gaze of the camera as Käsebier’s subject does. Cunningham cropped the portrait more closely to

Shepard, causing her face and hands to become most prominent and noticeable in the image. Her

32 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 16. 33 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 13. 34 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 16. 35 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 18. Marsh 14 lighting also takes a striking difference from the works of Käsebier. Cunningham lights part of the subject so directly that her white clothing appears to glow. The gauzy effect of this lighting causes Shepard to appear in movement, as if Cunningham captured her unexpectedly. The image possesses an ephemeral quality unlike that of many portraits because it appears that Cunningham captured the character of her sitter rather than simply her image.

Lorenz attributes the gauzy effect to Cunningham’s interest in Theosophy, an interest encouraged by Clare Shepard, who claimed to be a clairvoyant; he explains that The Dream “can be interpreted as the approximation of an astral body.”36 Lorenz attributes these pictorialist qualities of Cunningham’s early portraiture not only to interests of Cunningham herself, but also her wish to portray the personality of her sitter. By experimenting with the methods of the pictorialist style, Cunningham aligned herself with the prominent photographers of the day, but she also found a way to utilize the style in a way that captures her sitter’s philosophy and personality. This image functions as more than just a pictorialist portrait; it moves beyond the prioritization of style toward the prioritization of the subject, an idea perhaps developed through exposure to modernist thinking in Europe. This ability to capture a sitter’s personality prevails throughout her career even as she moves into a straight photography focus in the following decades, and likely plays a role in her decision to portray the sitter more directly. Her early pictorialist leanings show that she indeed developed her artistic practice for some time before arriving at a style more like that of Group f.64, and the factors that led to this change reveal how innovative she was as an artist.

Her innovations are not exclusive to her photographs, and the ideas she held about women and photography are important to consider in order to better understand some factors which likely led to her photography of plant forms. Her views of women are progressive but also

36 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 18. Marsh 15 explain why she considered photography an appropriate career for herself. In 1913, still early in her career, she published an article in her sorority’s magazine The Arrow entitled “Photography as a Profession for Women” in which she encouraged women to see photography as a viable option for a career, not because photography somehow embodies a medium more suited for women but because it is a medium suited to both sexes as a means of interpretation.37 Susan

Ehrens writes in “An Integration of Life and Work: Imogen Cunningham” that Cunningham never identified as a feminist. 38 This seems odd when reading her article in The Arrow because in the article she promotes so passionately the idea that women could maintain a career and raise children. Her decision to abstain from the label of feminist seems problematic, as much of her academic support came from sources of female empowerment: her sorority and a Women’s Club.

Further, in her article she emphasizes that photography constitutes a suitable profession for women because of the possibility it offers for continued pursuit of the work while raising a family, and even pinpoints the possibility that photography is beneficial to motherhood. She writes that

an ideal profession for a woman is one which she does not necessarily have to lay down permanently in the care and rearing of children. The pursuit of any art brings women in contact with the larger interests of the world, and her excursions into broader fields even during the rearing of children are bound to have an enlarging effect upon the home. To deny a woman the right to extend her energies in the search for knowledge or to express herself through some individual work or art is hampering her usefulness in her highest sphere – motherhood.39

To this, she adds the idea that photography need not suffer a distinction between male and female photographers but instead that anyone of good taste and knowledge of the medium should

37 Imogen Cunningham, “Photography as a Profession for Women,” Imogen Cunningham, Selected Texts and Bibliography, ed. by Amy Rule (Oxford: Clio, 1992) 47-53. 38 Ehrens, “An Integration of Life and Work: Imogen Cunningham 1883-1976,”, 64. 39 Cunningham, “Photography as a Profession for Women” 49. Marsh 16 pursue the field.40 This viewpoint seems quite feminist, especially as she promoted the idea that her gender possessed little importance to the work she was creating: it was the work itself that she wished to receive the focus of attention. Who created the work should not play into the value or understanding of the work, in Cunningham’s eyes, because the value lies in the success of the work itself. The benefit Cunningham was aiming for by putting out these ideas is clear—she hoped that by expressing such ideas she might gain better recognition simply as an artist rather than a female artist, a distinction that held great meaning during that time. Perhaps this also plays into her refusal to formally call herself a feminist; in many ways this identity may have hurt the way people viewed her photographs because the art of women involved with feminism becomes defined by that identity. By refusing it she hoped to keep her gender out of discussion in the reception of her works altogether.

The next milestone in her life happened when she married a fellow artist, an important event because it led to the birth of her children and a shift in her artistic practice to a focus on photographing the plants she grew as an amateur botanist. Through her friend Clare Sheperd,

Cunningham met Roi Partridge and they married in 1915.41 She used him as a model for some nude photographs which caused something of a local scandal upon their publication in The Town

Crier.42 These images followed the pictorialist tradition as did her earlier portraits, though their location and mystical quality also recall some of the allegorical photographs of Julia Margaret

Cameron. One of the early successful female photographers, Cameron made images that recalled legendary and heroic themes, a likely place of inspiration for Cunningham’s mystical approach to photography at this time. However, a shift in Cunningham’s work comes soon after these images, especially upon the birth of her children and her move to California. With this move

40 Cunningham, “Photography as a Profession for Women” 52. 41 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 19. 42 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 19. Marsh 17 came the development of a new concept in her photography. Among the influences which caused this shift in her work was her exposure to modernist photography through Camera Work, artist acquaintances in San Francisco, and through Italian Futurist exhibitions in California.43

As her husband began working as a professor, Cunningham took a break from professional photography to raise her children; however Lorenz posits that she began to feel bored with the break from her career.44 During this hiatus she photographed the things around her—her children, and the plants she cultivated.45 In this way, she came back to the study of plants that began her career in photography. In a lecture, she explained that gardening while raising children was easy, but maintaining her photographic practice while raising children proved more of a challenge.46 Her discovery that pursuing her photographic career while raising children was probably something of a shock for Cunningham, especially considering her article in The Arrow. In that article, she asserts that photography is a suitable profession for women because of the possibility of continuing to practice this art during motherhood. However, she persisted, and for this reason found that the most readily available and interesting subjects for her practice took the form of plants.

Here Cunningham takes the subject traditionally associated with amateur female photographers as she turns to the subjects of greatest convenience and availability: her flowers.

The importance of this type of photography to the status of female photographers is clear in the development of photography as a medium of art, as explained above in a discussion of the history of female photographers. Cunningham likely took inspiration from these women in the past who photographed flowers, as did many of her contemporaries, both male and female. These

43 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 23. 44 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 24. 45 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, Lorenz 24. 46 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 24. Marsh 18 photographers were now beginning to develop an interest in a different kind of photography that broke from the pictorialist tradition. In some ways, her interest in plant forms allowed her to stick with a thematic tradition of female photographers but also break from the artistic style of the time. She is empowered by her ability to exist in both realms—those of amateur and professional photography—because it pushed her in a new artistic direction.

She moved drastically away from her pictorialist roots and into a more modern style as she began to photograph flowers in the 1920s, a style similar to that later celebrated by Group f.64. Her compositions started to focus much more on the simplicity of form and an attempt to represent this simplicity in her photographs. She moved strikingly away from the pictorialist aesthetic in these images, focusing instead on the “pure,” seemingly objective, representation of the object before her. Her successful representation of the ephemeral and fragile qualities of the plants is unsurprising, as she had become an amateur botanist while raising her children.47 Her turn away from the pictorialist tradition represents the most intriguing aspect of these photographs. Compared with the gauzy portraits and allegorical images of her early work, these images begin to focus on simplicity, careful attention to technical accuracy, and even move towards abstraction in the intense focus on form. These forms likely stemmed from an awareness of the American Precisionists and the photographic work being made in Europe.48 That she was able to develop this shift in her career while pursuing two traditionally female roles—that of raising children and that of making flowers the subject of her work—shows her dedication to her profession. However, her focus on form embodies modern ideas of the simplification of figures which began to define this time in both photography and in painting and sculpture.

47 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas without End, 27. 48 Richard Lorenz, "Group f.64," Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, accessed November 10, 2013. Marsh 19

Observing her body of work exemplifies this change in direction she took in the 1920s. A photograph dated 1910-1915 represents one of the earliest attempts at botanical study. This is My

Garden [fig.3] shows an unnamed medicinal herb from Asia. Slightly unfocused and awkwardly cropped, the image implies a greater interest in the placement of the plant in surroundings which complement its origin, with Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa visible in the background as well as a table cloth with script creating the ground. The camera’s focus is on a small portion of the plant, with the rest of the photograph blurry. This lack of a direct focus and the presence of complementary contextualizing objects recall her pictorialist roots. The photograph is not focused solely on the plant which instead becomes lost in the pictorialist interest in composition and soft focus. Her choice in subject matter deserves some thought. The decision to portray an unnamed Asian herb along with vague contextualizing elements indicates that she held the same interest in the arts of the Far East as some other pictorialists did.49 Her later plant forms move away from this type of contextualization, causing this image to seem like something of anomaly in her oeuvre. It shows most importantly the experimentation with form and composition that occurred during this time in her career. Perhaps also the choice of an exotic medicinal herb shows her continued interest in science and the way in which it interacts with art, both in her photo and in relation to the elements of contextualization she includes. Naming the photo This Is

My Garden also lends the work an amateur air, showing her continued balancing of the tradition of female amateur photographers and professional interests.

In contrast, Thorn Apple [fig. 4], created in 1921, displays a much more seemingly straightforward depiction of the plant form. Though not quite typical of Cunningham’s most successful botanical studies, because the photograph lacks the compositional closeness to the subject common in her later works, it shows that Cunningham’s interest was changing from the

49 Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers, 74. Marsh 20 painterly focus of pictorialism to the form focused photographs of straight photography.

Cunningham’s technical expertise when yielding her camera is evident in this image as it displays proper focus, effective tonal range, and compositional control. This display of control and decision to focus her camera more precisely represents a shift from the pictorialist image of

This is My Garden and toward a modern aesthetic of simplification of form.

Her development into a straight photographical style becomes more prevalent in

Cunningham’s slightly later botanical studies. In two photographs of calla lilies, Calla [fig. 5] and Two Callas [fig. 6], both from 1925, Cunningham suddenly brings the camera much closer to the subject; she creates a significantly more compelling composition which, as a result of the closeness of the subject, nears abstraction. These works by Cunningham might be viewed by some as a combination of the ideas of Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, as explained in “This

Photography Which is not One: In the Grey Zone” by Carol Armstrong. If her works are a combination of Modotti’s and Weston’s ideas, the popular assumption is that she took their ideas from seeing their work and utilized them for her practice. This assumption is problematic, however, primarily because the three photographers developed these characteristics more or less simultaneously. Armstrong argues that while Weston’s plant forms focused on straightforward representation, technical precision, and tonal range, Modotti’s works focused on the ephemeral beauty of the plants and the depiction of their soft qualities. Modotti’s flowers fill up a majority of the composition, while Weston’s simply operate as the focus of his compositions.

Cunningham combines these ideas to create an essentially modern approach to the plants which emphasizes the form of the flowers through a closely cropped composition and a focus on straightforward technical precision. Her photographs display none of the ‘feminine’ gaze, as

Armstrong noted was so prevalent in the works of Modotti. Where Cunningham’s work Marsh 21 innovates is in their continued drive toward abstraction. She moves closer to the subject, creating an intimacy between the viewer and the forms in front of them.

Through the 1920s, Cunningham’s photographs became increasingly characteristic of straight photography and this trend is seen most prominently in her botanical studies. Most of the work she created during this decade focuses on botanical forms, and it is in these works that the earliest emphasis on precision in technical practice seems to arrive. The role of botanical studies as a catalyst for her development into a straight photographer are clear when viewing the portraits of the same time period. She first begins creating straight photographs of flowers and later applies these techniques to portraits and human forms. This is evident in the portraits from

1922 of Johan Hagemeyer and Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather 3 [fig. 7], which show significantly less emphasis on precision, sharp forms, and tonal range than do the botanical studies of this time. In 1923 Cunningham created Nude [fig.8], which depicts a woman’s chest and neck with raised arms. Behind the woman a man’s arms appear to hold her. This image displays the movement toward straight photography that her botanical studies had taken, indicating that the ideas she developed in her botanical studies were beginning to influence her other subject matter. Cunningham focused the camera precisely to depict the texture of the woman’s skin and create a tactile sensation for the viewer. However, this is one of the few images of people she created during this time, and it is especially unique because of the move toward abstraction in depicting the human body which Cunningham typically avoided. The most important developments occur in her plant forms. In Agave Design 2 [fig. 9] and Water Hyacinth

2 [fig. 10], both from the 1920s, the forms of these plants have become nearly abstract. She now makes the plants the entire focus of the photograph- no background or ground line distracts from the pure representation of their form. The details of the flower are important and sharply defined; Marsh 22 they embody the concept of straight photography, despite the fact that she made these photographs before the creation of Group f.64.

In 1932 Cunningham joined Ansel Adams, Weston, and other influential photographers from the West in creating Group f.64, which espoused the ideas of this “straight photography” as the direction which photography should follow.50 Though the group only exhibited together a few times and lasted for 3 short years, until 1935, their influence on the direction which

American photography took in the following years is vastly important. In their manifesto, the f.64 group proclaims their purpose of showing “what it considers the best contemporary photography of the west” and emphasizes the importance for them that the work displayed by their group members not become a simple derivative of former artistic styles.51 The manifesto specifically names pictorialism as one of these “derivative” modes of photography which they wanted to move away from.52

Cunningham’s membership in this group displays the importance she played in the development of straight photography. Her works from the decade before already held many of the characteristics of the f.64 photography group, indicating that the group served more for her as a means through which to characterize the direction she had already taken and display these works. In fact, the plant forms of the 1920s became the defining works of her involvement with

Group f.64. Ansel Adams, in a statement for Camera Craft in 1933 described Cunningham as “a solid artist, especially fluent in treatment of flower and plant life and sensitive portraiture.”53 He further recognized her “adaptability” as an artist, which he claims he can identify because of the

50 Lorenz, “Group f.64”. 51 Heyman, Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography, 53. 52 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 53. 53 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 55. Marsh 23

“transitional stage” she was in during this time.54 Adams recognized the transitional quality of her botanical studies, the way these works represented her shift from pictorialism to straight photography- and hence modernist ideals of flatness and abstraction. It is important to note that she created these works well before the creation of Group f.64. In fact, one of her most recognizable works, Succulent, came from 1920. This work epitomizes the concepts of Group f.64 with clarity of form and “purely photographic methods.”55 Though many see Cunningham as inheriting much of her style from Weston and Adams through her connection with Group f.64, the time frame in which she began to develop the botanical prints indicates that her oeuvre took this direction independently, under the influence of both Camera Work and the European photographers of whose work she was well aware.

Her determined independence continued even as she acted as a member of Group f.64, which was perhaps a way to differentiate herself from other members of the group and show her own artistic agency. As Lauren Jimerson pointed out in her presentation “Imogen Cunningham’s

Straight Photo Nudes,” Cunningham broke some of the rules of Group f.64.56 Her fellow photographers noted that Cunningham focused less on the importance of creating a “quality” contact print, (the print of a film strip made in order to view all of the photos in a roll). They also recognized her pursuit of methods of manipulation in her photos that other members eschewed in order to make, in their words, “pure” photographic images. Cunningham, on the other hand,

“often cropped her negatives, inverted them, and even created double exposures.”57 By following her own inclination in her artistic practice, Cunningham showed that she cared little for the practices that others believed necessary to result in truly artistic photographs. Her work, despite

54 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 55. 55 Heyman, Seeing Straight, 53. 56 Lauren Jimerson, “Imogen Cunningham’s Straight Photo Nudes,” Presentation at the Feminist Art History Conference, American University (Washington, DC, November 8, 2013) 4. 57 Jimerson, “Imogen Cunningham’s Straight Photo Nudes,” 4. Marsh 24 not adhering to the exact standards of Group f.64, still played an important role in their exhibitions. This implies that her photographs, despite flouting the standards outlined by f.64, still resonated with the group as significant works of art photography.

Beyond her independence in developing artistic practice before Group f.64, Cunningham continued to operate fairly autonomously while a member of the group. Cropping prints was technically against the prescribed practices of Group f.64, but Cunningham chose to do so anyway in order to capture form over subject in her images, particularly in her images of people which began to operate similarly to many of her botanical studies. An example of a print that she manipulated by cropping the image is Triangles from 1928 [fig. 11]. The nude image shows a breast, part of the stomach, legs, and one arm of a woman. Closely cropped, the image appears almost abstract. At first glance a viewer might not immediately recognize the forms in the image.

She pursued a similar concept in Roi Partridge from 1927, where some of his knees, an arm, and part of his chest, throat, and chin are visible. She developed skills and concepts of abstraction in photographing plant forms, translating these practices into these nudes and her later work in which she clearly focuses on form over recognizable representation. By working with plants which she knew so well, she developed a sophisticated understanding of how to break down a subject into forms and designs and create flattened, modernist compositions with many different types of subjects. As she developed into a professional portraitist after the disbanding of Group f.64, the skills she developed as a straight photographer compositions gave her photographs a higher aesthetic quality in their focus on clarity of form and creating a compelling composition.

Her development of these skills began when she first looked to plant forms for inspiration.

Cunningham’s botanical studies take a tradition of female amateur photography and bring them into the professional realm. She does this by creating studies that display a unique Marsh 25 perspective, often highly geometric or even sometimes verging into abstraction. Her ability to portray flowers in such a way implies an intimacy with her subject which she acquired through her amateur botany interests as well as from her lifelong interaction with science and plants. Not only do these images mark an important milestone in her artistic practice, but the techniques she developed prevailed throughout her career when she returned to professional photography after the break she took to raise her children. In later works such as her portraits and nude studies, the practices she developed in creating botanical studies remain evident. The importance of her botanical studies as a turning point in her artistic development is vital to understanding her works and her involvement in the photographic movements of her time. By studying her works, her writings, and her biography, the factors which led her to this turning point become clear.

The use of flowers as subjects for women’s photographs historically seems logical not only because of their ready availability in the homes of the middle and upper-class women who chose to become amateur photographers, but also as a continuation of an artistic tradition. As many art historians have pointed out, women traditionally only possessed the right to access limited genres of painting, as in the French Académie when life drawing classes were made available only to men.58 The few women who managed to train in the Académie then were relegated to other types of painting, particularly portraiture and still life, which in turn became a feminized form of painting. The possibility that the tradition of female painters in the Académie created something of a lasting tradition among female artists is worth consideration. Still life, however, rested at the bottom of the hierarchy of painting in the academy, while the botanical studies women created in photography represented a somewhat innovative and thoughtful push toward art photography because of the necessity of arranging flowers to create an interesting

58 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Women, Art and Power and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), 159. Marsh 26 composition. While men created photographs of flowers for scientific purposes, women found in them inspiration for a more aesthetic creation. Whether this vein arose from necessity or convenience, still life flower photography became the type championed by women from the beginning, and Cunningham took it up and became an innovator in the genre through her own studies.

Cunningham’s body of work was heavily influenced and propelled by her scientific pursuits, which in many ways was a masculine path into photography at this time. By working as a photographer in the botany department, she entered photography through a path traditionally occupied by men. While female photographers existed before Cunningham’s time, Cunningham broke down the standard roles of masculinity and femininity not only by attending university

(she was the only one of her sisters to do so) but also by taking a scientific path to photography, rather than the amateur path many women took.59 She managed this in two ways: first by pursuing chemistry while at university and secondly by working in the botany department of her university creating scientific images. Exceptions to this male dominated scientific pursuit exist, such as botanist Anna Atkins, who created cyanotypes representing algae of the British Aisles beginning in 1843 and distributing them in bound editions to different scientific organizations.60

Atkins’s images operated primarily as scientific specimens, though some of her works used lace and other materials which indicate an interest in design and composition as well as science.61

Cunningham’s path to photography was traditionally one taken by men at this time, though this was not exclusive to her. However, there has been little discussion about the possibility that this exposure to science photography affected her artistic practice.

59 Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, 11-13. 60 Rosenblum, History of Women Photographers, 41. 61 Rosenblum, History of Women Photographers, 322. Marsh 27

How her scientific experience develops into an aesthetic language remains a question. It seems that this initial pursuit of photography led her into scientific study rather than into a more traditional artistic path of study. The way in which this influenced her later work remains a question that needs answering. She gained important knowledge of the chemical processes of photography before attempting to break into the world of art photography; indeed it seems that this probably gave her an important edge over most amateur photographers in the ability she possessed to control the development of the image so effectively in every step of the photographic process. Without her pursuit of more masculine and nontraditional roles for women, it is hard to know if her career as an art photographer would ever have taken the effect it did. Perhaps most importantly, her time creating botanical studies at the University of

Washington likely inspired her pursuit of that subject in a more aesthetic way later in her life when she found it necessary to spend most of her time in the home caring for her children rather than in her studio.

Despite attempts in promoting her artwork as autonomously valuable and not simply novel as the work of a female photographer, it seems that her femininity came into focus many times, and people usually saw her as the quirky, eccentric female photographer of the west coast; a character whose persona interested people as much as, if not more than, the photographs she created. Ehrens writes that Cunningham’s body of work defies classification, and that “all the public attention actually obscured her achievements as an artist, and not even a Guggenheim

Award, in 1970, and two monographs on her work led to serious critical assessments.”62 Because of the variety of subjects and media she used within the field of photography, much of her work becomes lost in the discussion of her oeuvre, though Ehrens points out that certain aspects of her compositional qualities, the lighting in her photographs, and the consistent production of work

62 Ehrens, “An Integration of Life and Work,” 66. Marsh 28 point to a consistency in her body of work which should not be overlooked.63 In any case, the fact of her personality overpowering the focus on her artistic production becomes an important factor in considering which works have become prominent in discussion of her oeuvre and how these might be indicative of what ideas have not been implemented in scholarship surrounding her work.

What remains to be seen is a comprehensive understanding of how Cunningham fits into the overall history of photography of the west coast. In general the female photographers of this time are lumped together as working under the guidance of their better-known male counterparts.

Little credence has been given to the idea that perhaps Cunningham developed some of the ideas which developed into the concepts of Group f.64 herself, independently of the group or of male influence. In order to develop this possibility more thoroughly, a look into the work being done by contemporary photographers and the timeline in developing the concepts of straight photography is necessary.

One of the contemporary female photographers who developed a body of work surrounding plant forms is Tina Modotti, and her work is often viewed in conjunction with

Cunningham’s because they both focused a great amount of their work on plant forms. In “The

Photography Which Is Not One: In the Gray Zone with Tina Modotti,” Carol Armstrong points out that the work of Tina Modotti influenced Edward Weston, despite the blatant absence of her work in the discourse on photographers from this time.64 Indeed, much of the discussion of

Modotti rests in her role as muse for Weston, despite evidence which indicates her important contribution to the development of Weston’s artistic ideas as a photographer in her own rite.65

63 Ehrens, “An Integration of Life and Work,” 67. 64 Carol Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One: In the Gray Zone with Tina Modotti,” October 101 (Summer 2002), 23. 65 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 23. Marsh 29

This place as a muse likely originates in Weston’s “Daybooks” which Armstrong writes operate as “something more than diaries; clearly written with posterity in view, they do much more than log Weston’s day-to-day dealings… They construct a myth of Weston as Grand Master of the

Photographic Beautiful.”66 Beyond this, Armstrong asserts that Modotti’s work holds important differences with Weston’s work and therefore her work should be considered as indicative of a difference in artistic styles and ideas.67

Cunningham seems to create photos that combine these two artists’ styles. Most importantly in the differences between the two photographers is that Weston focused on simple, sleek form while Modotti’s images retained a hazy, uncontrolled quality.68 Armstrong argues that

Modotti’s photographs held an opposing position to Weston’s because of her preference for portraying the transience of these objects rather than attempting to transcend them like Weston.69

This difference may be seen as one sparked by gender roles. Armstrong asserts in “Cupid’s

Pencil of Light: Julia Margaret Cameron and the Maternalization of Photography” that Julia

Margaret Cameron’s images display a hysterical quality which arose from this view of women from her time, displayed through her disinterest in proper focus and chemical practice in the development process.70 This “hystericization” of her photographic practice demonstrated the womanly inability to control technical equipment. These qualities in her photos reveal the prevailing notions of the time that viewed women as weak and hysterical. Modotti’s images give a similar impression when compared with Weston’s. However, Cunningham’s ability to combine

66 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 20. 67 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 23. 68 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 30. 69 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 32. 70 Carol Armstrong, “Cupid’s Pencil of Light: Julia Margaret Cameron and the Materialization of Photography,” October 76 (Spring 1996) 114-141. Marsh 30 aspects of both of these photographers makes her works somewhat unique and cutting edge at the time.

Armstrong writes that Modotti created the concept of photographing a single, or two or four, flowers which occupy the majority of the composition.71 This often is attributed to Weston in terms of photographic history and Georgia O’Keeffe in terms of painting before him.72

Modotti, according to Armstrong, should receive credit for a matrilineage of photographers taking images of plant forms- most importantly influencing Imogen Cunningham.73 However, this assertion remains a difficult one to prove for many reasons. It seems unlikely that

Cunningham’s inspiration for photographing these forms lies purely in the influence of these other contemporary photographers. Indeed, the fact that female photographers historically photographed plant forms so frequently makes this decision perhaps an unsurprising one for

Cunningham. Her flower photographs follow this tradition of female photographers but move forward as she developed her artistic practice. Previous scholarship has posited that Cunningham found inspiration for this development in the work of Weston or Modotti. The problem lies in the jump from Weston’s work to Cunningham, as well as the time frame in which Cunningham began creating her plant photographs. Armstrong writes that Modotti began photographing plants in 1924, and Weston began his in 1925.74 Cunningham’s earliest botanical studies, not including those made for the botany department while she attended university, are dated to the early 1920s, making the attribution of this artistic development difficult. Armstrong writes also that Modotti’s approach to photography focused less on technique and mastery of the equipment.75

Cunningham’s development of more sophisticated techniques therefore was more likely

71 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 27. 72 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 27. 73 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 27. 74 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 27. 75 Armstrong, “This Photography Which Is Not One,” 27. Marsh 31 influenced by the work of Weston because Cunningham’s studies embody the control and focus on simplicity of form which she and Weston moved towards during that time. However, the probability that she developed this focus on form in relation to her botanical studies fairly independently of Weston also seems more likely. Always aware of the artistic developments by nature of her artistic circle of friends in California as well as the attention she gave to publications such as Camera Work and Vanity Fair, she probably found inspiration for this shift in a combination of sources, not just in the looming figure of Weston. Indeed, her exposure to modernist thinking which she undoubtedly experienced while living in Dresden might be seen as the earliest inspiration for this development. These aspects of influence point to a much more independent and self-driven development into her artistic practice than has been allowed in the discourse about f.64.

Cunningham’s involvement with Group f.64 shows that her work was respected by her contemporaries. Though short lived, Group f.64 greatly influenced photographers for years, as

Beaumont Newhall writes in the foreword to Seeing Straight.76 Newhall gives significant—and deserved—recognition to Weston as a photographer who fully embodied the ideals of Group f.64 before the group even came together.77 Despite the truthfulness of this claim, he glosses over the contribution of other artists too easily. Imogen Cunningham, aware of Weston’s works, the works of European photographers, and the images created for Camera Work and Vanity Fair also began to shift toward straight photography before Group f.64. Her botanical studies represent this alteration—by observing the shifts in this subject her change in photographic practice becomes clear. As Adams noted, her botanical studies from the 1920s represent her transitional

76 Heyman, Seeing Straight, IX. 77 Heyman, Seeing Straight, VIII. Marsh 32 period, an important one for this photographer who remained so influential throughout her life, as an artist and professor.

Cunningham’s botanical studies represent a transitional period in her artistic practice while she raised her kids and took time off from professional photography. Though photographs of flowers were common among women since the spread of photographic practice, Cunningham took the tradition and made it her own, pioneering the straight photography movement, along with her fellow Group f.64 members. However, she never lived in the constraints of others’ ideas for how photography should be made, and instead continually developed her own methods and practices to further her artistic development. She came to her style by following her own unique path, developing her own ideas, and producing work which would influence photographers for generations. Her path to the creation of this influential oeuvre, and to the establishment of her eminence as a photographer on the west coast, can be seen clearly when studying her botanical studies, which represent the vital turning point in her development.

Marsh 33

Images

[Fig. 1] Imogen Cunningham, The Dream, 1910. Image Source: http://www.masters-of- photography.com/images/full/cunningham/cunningham_dream.jpg Marsh 34

[Fig. 2] Gertrude Käsebier, Miss N, 1903. Image Source: http://www.leegallery.com/gertrude-kasebier/gertrude-kasebier-photography Marsh 35

[Fig. 3] This is My Garden, 1910-1925. Image source: http://www.junglekey.fr/search.php?query=Imogen+Cunningham&type=image&lang=fr®ion =fr&img=1&adv=1&fqhist1=Imogen+Cunningham&start=50 Marsh 36

[Fig 4.] Imogen Cunningham, Thorn Apple, 1921. Image source : http://amymarshall0601.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/emulation/ Marsh 37

[Fig. 5] Imogen Cunningham, Calla, c. 1925. Image Source: http://www.strawberige.com/2010/11/calla.html Marsh 38

[Fig. 6] Imogen Cunningham, Two Callas, c. 1925. Image source: http://unccphotography.blogspot.com/2010/08/imogen-cunningham.html Marsh 39

[Fig. 7] Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather 3, 1922. Image source: http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425991873/119555/imogen-cunningham-edward-weston-and- margrethe-mather-3-1922.html

[Fig 8] Imogen Cunningham, Nude, 1923. Image source : http://www.photoliaison.com/imogen_cunningham/Imogen_Cunningham.htm Marsh 40

[Fig. 9] Imogen Cunningham, Agave Design 2, 1920s. Image source: http://theredlist.fr/wiki-2- 16-601-807-view-avant-gardism-experimentation-profile-cunningham.html Marsh 41

[Fig. 10] Imogen Cunningham, Water Hyacinth 2, 1920s. Image source: http://www.photoliaison.com/Images/Imogen_Cunningham_Album/pages/Water%20Hyacinth% 202,%201920s_jpg.htm Marsh 42

[Fig. 11] Imogen Cunningham, Triangles, 1928. Image source : http://www.theslideprojector.com/photo1/photo1lecturepresentations/photo1lecture18.html

Marsh 43

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