LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  PHOTOGRAPHS PART I  / 

11

IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM (American, 1883-1976) AGAVE DESIGN 2 signed and dated

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:30,000.00 - 50,000.00 USD
IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM (American, 1883-1976) AGAVE DESIGN 2 signed and dated
IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM (American, 1883-1976) AGAVE DESIGN 2 signed and dated "Imogen Cunningham 1920" in pencil below image on mount vintage gelatin silver print mounted on board 9 1/2 x 7 7/16 in. (24.1 x 18.9 cm) mount: 14 x 11 3/16 in. (35.6 x 28.4 cm) PROVENANCE Private Collection, NEW YORK LITERATURE Margery Mann, imOGEN! IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM PHOTOGRAPHS, 1910-1973, Seattle, 1974, p. 68 (illustrated) Pradip Malde and P. Celina Lunsford, IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM: DIE POESIE DER FORM, Schaffhausen, 1993, p. 22 (illustrated) Richard Lorenz, IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM: IDEAS WITHOUT END: A LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS, San Francisco, 1993, p. 99, pl. 33 (illustrated) Richard Lorenz, IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM: FLORA, Boston, 1996, pl. 19 (illustrated) Michel Frizot, ed., A NEW HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY, Cologne, 1998, p. 479 (illustrated) In order to care for her twin sons born in 1917, Imogen Cunningham turned to her garden for subject matter, making close-up and abstract photographs of plants. About her years of early motherhood she wrote that she kept "one hand in the dishpan, the other in the darkroom." At 34, she already had an impressive career in photography behind her, having worked in Edward S. Curtis' studio and studied photographic chemistry in Germany. Her great strength in photographing plants was her combination of scientific precision and innovative lighting and framing. The resultant photographs, such as this lot, are at once detailed records of natural forms and stimulating modernist compositions. Her plant photographs were in the forefront of avant-garde photography. She made her experiments abstracting plant forms long before Edward Weston and before she was aware of Albert Renger-Patzsch's, which are decidedly less abstract. Eight of her plant photographs were included in the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart in 1929, which virtually defined the state of advanced photography at the time. Cunningham lived a long, creative life but her plant photographs from the twenties are arguably her most influential and enduring.
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