1883 — 1976
Born in Portland, Oregon in 1883, Imogen Cunningham would go on to become one of the seven San Francisco Bay Area photographers to found Group f/64, a collective defined by a use of sharp focus and precise framing of landscapes. Cunningham, a chemistry graduate, had written her thesis on the modern processes of photography, and leaned into a modernist style across her own works, adapting with the times to craft an aesthetic she defined as "Western, not American." She spent four years working for Vanity Fair until its demise in 1936, later expanding her portfolio into street photography and taking up a faculty position at the California School of Fine Arts.
In a profession dominated by men, Cunningham was one of the rare women to play crucial role in shaping, and evolving, early twentieth-century photography in the US. She was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship in 1970. Cunningham died in 1976, aged 93, in the city that brought her fame and success — San Francisco.
