Imogen Cunningham

mounted, signed in pencil on the mount, titled and inscribed 'Photograph by Imogen Cunningham, 4540 Harbor View, Oakland' in green pencil on the reverse, framed, circa 1930

The Weston Gallery, Carmel

Collection of 7-Eleven, Inc.

Sotheby's New York, 3 October 2001, Sale 7702, Lot 163

Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, 2005

Richard Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Flora (Boston, 1996), pl. 61

Richard Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: 1883-1976 (Köln, 2001), p. 192

William A. Ewing, Flora Photographica: Masterpieces of Flower Photography (London, 1991), pl. 174

With its straightforward and detailed depiction of its subject matter, this print encapsulates the 'straight' approach to photography that Cunningham adopted in the late 1920s, and perfected in the 1930s. Close examination of this print reveals a world of detail - from the delicately-veined stem of the lily, to the barbed tip, to the clear drops of water that cling to the flower. Shooting with a narrow aperture, to capture detail, and printing on glossy paper that enhanced the clarity of the image, Cunningham has created a remarkable account of her subject. This photograph is on semi-glossy paper and is in essentially excellent condition. When the print is examined very closely in raking light, a few soft impressions are faintly visible and likely occurred prior to or as a result of mounting. The large, sturdy buff mount has darkened with age somewhat, and there is some soiling and wear to the edges. Traces of old glue at the top of the mount suggest this photograph was at one time overmatted. The mount is sunned at the periphery of the print. The reverse of the mount is unevenly darkened and soiled. Cunningham's title and inscription are significantly faded. The number '4692' is also written in an unidentified hand in pencil on the reverse.
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The photograph offered here, a scarce, early print of Cunningham’s study of the trumpet-shaped Zantedeschia aethiopica, exemplifies the ‘straight’ approach to photography that the photographer adopted in the late 1920s.  The droplets of water that cling to the calla, the plasticity of its arrow-shaped leaf, and the veins radiating from the stem are rendered in this contact print with crystalline detail. 

Flowers and plants were central to Cunningham’s oeuvre from the beginning.  Trained as a chemist, Cunningham began her photographic career by making slides for botanists to supplement her college income.   During a 1909 scholarship to study photographic chemistry in Germany, Cunningham likely encountered Albert Renger-Patzsch’s articles about plant photographs.  During her stay, she visited the International Exhibition in Dresden and would have been exposed to photographers working in the realistic Neue Sachlichkeit movement, such as Karl Blossfeldt. 

By the early 1920s, with young children at home, Cunningham focused her camera increasingly on plants from her garden.  While Cunningham’s dramatic and sensuous flower studies of the early 1920s tended to concentrate on details of floral anatomy, Calla with Leaf and her other botanicals of the late 1920s and early 1930s are more objective renderings of the plants’ natural form.  Reacting to the then-current Pictorial trend in photography, Cunningham, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and four other Bay Area photographers formed Group f.64 in 1932.  Named for the smallest aperture on a lens, which yielded the greatest detail, Group f.64 promoted truth and precision of detail in photography and favored contact printing over hand-retouched enlargements and croppings. 

As of this writing, it is believed that only two other early prints of this image have been offered at auction: a print from the collection of Dr. Anthony Terrana in 2013; and one from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art sold in these rooms in April 2001.