IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM, NUDES
“Imogen Cunningham decided to become a photographer after seeing the photographs of Gertrude Käsebier. Cunningham grew up in the Pacific Northwest, worked for two years in Edward Curtis's studio, and later operated a successful photography studio in Seattle, Washington. In 1915 she married the painter Roi Partridge and moved to San Francisco. Cunningham's nude studies of Partridge in the northern California landscape are among the earliest examples of male nudes by a woman photographer. Although her early work was Pictorialist in style, in 1932 she became a member of the Modernist Group f/64.
In 1947 Cunningham began to teach photography; although she continued to do so intermittently until 1973, she confided to Minor White: "Probably I am not a good teacher. I cannot put myself in the place of a person not knowing anything and not being of his own will interested in supplying that want. So you can see what I think of the pupils." In 1967 she was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Toward the end of a long and distinguished career and having herself reached that age, she began a portrait series titled After Ninety . In 1976, having earned a reputation of a feisty eccentric, Cunningham appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” - Getty