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Overview
From the earliest years of her career, which began about 1906, until her death in 1976, photographer Imogen Cunningham explored botanical imagery with intelligence and originality. Her detailed examinations of nature combined scientific curiosity with the eloquent creative expression of a true artist. Imogen Cunningham: Flora presents a stunning selection of Cunningham's botanical images dating from 1913 through the 1970s, with an emphasis on work from the 1920s and 1930s. More than half the images have never been published. In his illustrated essay, author Richard Lorenz discusses Cunningham's abiding amateur interest in botany and traces the evolution of her photographic imagery, which closely paralleled many of the technical and aesthetic developments of the twentieth century. Botanical notes on plants illustrated in the plates, a chronology of Cunningham's life, and a selected bibliography are included.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
As seen in this stirring monograph, prepared for a photo exhibit in San Francisco, Cunningham glorifies the form, order and variety of nature's floral aspect with superbly controlled gradations of light, shadow and substance. This pioneering and eclectic California photographer, active from the century's beginning to the '70s, "isolat[ed] her subject;... minimized the background, expanded scale with close-up scrutiny, and formalized presentation" for her floral studies, writes curator-critic Lorenz in a broad-based and sometimes flowery text accompanying 161 photos. Though attuned to pure nature for most of her career, Cunningham was also a "sophisticated aesthete" who "often delighted in upsetting common values"-a startling example being her double-image portrait of the artist Morris Graves, who is "psychically incorporated" into a forested landscape. Through extensive resort to contrasts and affinities vis--vis Cunningham's contemporaries-Weston, Adams, Stieglitz et al.-the author encompasses a seminal era in artistic photography, with Cunningham, about whom he has written three other books, as the star. (May)Library Journal
Prepared in association with an exhibition at San Francisco's Photos Gallery, this exquisite catalog showcases the botanical imagery of the great American photographer Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976). While raising her children, Cunningham began photographing plant life in her garden and West Coast neighborhood. Influenced by the stark lines and objectivity of the German modernists, her close-up, sensual photographs of tree trunks and branches, house plants, flowers, seaweed, leaves, pods, and driftwood often resemble animals, birds, fish, and human forms. Here, the 40 duotone and eight color plates, more than half never before published, convey a simple, translucent beauty. An informative essay, a chronology, and small photos of the plates paired with botanical notes round out the volume. Lorenz has curated many Cunningham exhibitions and written extensively about her (e.g., Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End, Chronicle, 1993). Essential for photography and botany collections.-Joan Levin, MLS, ChicagoBook Details
Published
June 7, 2001
Publisher
Bulfinch
Pages
160
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780821227312