Imogen Cunningham

by Lorenz, Richard

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.