Imogen Cunningham, seventy years of looking
« American photographer (1883-1976), one of the first great professional photographers, active until age 93. »
A chemistry graduate in 1907, Cunningham studied photochemistry in Dresden and opened her studio in Seattle in 1910. A pioneer on several counts: a professional woman photographer when the field was male, the first to dare a male nude (My Husband, 1915) — guaranteed scandal.
With Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, she co-founded f/64 in 1932. Her close-ups of flowers — Magnolia Blossom (1925), Two Callas (1929) — turned plants into pure formal objects, all transparency and geometry. Her work crossed pictorialism, modernism, portrait and street photography without rupture.
At 90, she began After Ninety, a series of portraits of the elderly. She died in 1976 at 93, while still photographing. Seventy years of continuous work, in which her visual curiosity never flagged — a near-unique case in the history of the medium.