Imogen Cunningham

Born in Portland, USA in 1883. She died in 1976. Cunningham was one of the first professional female photographers in America and is best known for her botanical photography, though she also produced images of nudes, industrial landscapes, and street scenes. After studying photography in Germany, Cunningham opened a portrait studio in Seattle, producing soft-focus allegorical prints in the tradition of Pictorialism. In 1932 she joined an association of modernist photographers known as f/64, rejecting sentimental soft-focus subjects in favor of greater sensuousness. Among the members of f/64 were Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Willard van Dyke. Cunningham was also interested in human subjects and frequently took pictures of the hands of musicians and artists. She associated at various times with other iconic 20th-century photographers, including Minor White, and Dorothea Lange.