Imogen Cunningham was born in Portland, Oregon on the 12th of April in 1883 and she died on the 23rd of June in 1976.
She was an American photographer, known for her botanical pieces, nudes and industrial landscapes. She bought her first camera at the age of eighteen, and went to the University of Washington to study Chemistry, in 1903. Around this time, she got inspired to take up photography again, by the works of Gertrude Käsebier. She began with portraiture, although with the help of her Chemistry professor, she began to study the chemistry behind photography. She paid for her tuition by photographing plants for the botany department. After education, she went to work for Edward S. Curtis in his Seattle studio, where she gained knowledge on the portraiture business and practical photography, and she also learned platinum printing. She then went to work for Technische Hochschule in Dresen, where she assisted the photographic chemistry department to find cheaper alternatives for the expensive platinum used for the printing. For one of her photography projects, she photographed her friend, Roi Partridge, in the nude, as a mystical woodland faun, and this caused a 'scandal' due to a woman photographing a male nude. She then became increasingly more into her botanical photography again, and eventually even street photography. |
I love how simplistic and minimalist her photographs are, I sometimes feel like we overlook the beauty that is within even the most simple of objects, and I appreciate her bold decision in photographing her male friend in the nude, as all of our bodies are essentially the same underneath, whether we are male or female.
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