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Born in Portland in 1883 (d. 1976), Imogen Cunningham studied chemistry and photography in Seattle, where she exhibited frequently, leading to her first solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1914. The artist landed in the Bay Area in 1920 where she continued to her astute photographic experiments and explorations across subject matters and techniques, supporting herself by doing commercial photography and eventually teaching. In 1932, Cunningham co-founded the group f/64, a group which included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, among others. During the war years, she set up a studio in her San Francisco apartment in North Beach and turned her focus to documentary photography.
Though she is regarded prominently for her depictions of botanicals, industrial landscapes, and nudes, her large body of documentary work contains remarkable twentieth century portraits, suffused with her expert technical hand and perceptive eye. Coffee Gallery, San Francisco, 1960 (1960) was taken at a venue in North Beach, near her apartment, during a time when Lawrence Ferlinghetti could be found reading poetry or Janis Joplin performing music.Research Type
Collections Manager