Cunningham, Imogen

Frida Kahlo: Portraits 0f An Icon

From 1926 until her death in 1954, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo created striking, often shocking, images that reflected her turbulent life. One of four daughters born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descent, in the Mexico City suburb of Coyoacn, Kahlo did not originally plan to become an artist. During her convalescence from a bus accident in her late teens, Kahlo began to paint with oils. Her pictures, mostly self-portraits and still-lifes, were deliberately naive, filled with the bright colors and flattened forms of the Mexican folk art she loved. At 21, Kahlo fell in love with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera; their stormy, passionate relationship survived infidelities, the pressures of Rivera's career, a divorce and remarriage, and Kahlo's poor health. The couple traveled to the United States and France, where Kahlo met luminaries from the worlds of art and politics. She had her first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City in 1938 and enjoyed considerable success during the 40s, but her reputation soared posthumously, beginning in the 80s with the publication of numerous books about her work by feminist art historians and others. In the last two decades an explosion of Kahlo-inspired films, plays, calendars, and jewelry has transformed the artist into a veritable cult figure. Portraits of an Icon is not another book featuring Kahlo's beloved, tortured self-portraits. Rather, it offers another kind of portrait of the artist, a means of seeing her through the eyes of those who surrounded her: modern masters of the camera such as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Martin Munkacsi; leading photojournalists such as Giselle Freund, Bernard Silberstein, and Fritz Henle; and Kahlo's relatives, lovers, and friends, among them Guillermo Kahlo, Nicolas Muray, and Lola Alvarez Bravo. The images span Kahlo's life, beginning with a photograph of a self-possessed chubby four-year-old, her fists full of wilting roses, and ending with the image of an emaciated, wasted figure laying on her deathbed, dressed in pre-Columbian finery. They follow the artist's trajectory from precocious child to famous artist, bringing into focus the painter, the paintings, the patient, the wife, the daughter, the lover, the friend. They permit a look into her bedroom, a seat at her table, a visit to her hospital room, a stroll through her garden, a view into her collections, and some play with her pets. While many of these images provide us with a unique opportunity to glimpse the woman behind the facade, others, though less revealing, are equally fascinating in allowing us to view one of the most intriguing of the artist's creations--the construction of a self-image as carefully crafted and conceived as any of her works of art.

Imogen Cunningham: Ideas without End A Life and Photographs

From bold, evocative nudes to starkly beautiful still lifes, Imogen Cunningham's pioneering work has garnered worldwide acclaim. One of the first women to make her living as a photographer, Cunningham consistently experimented with a wide range of techniques during her remarkable career. Ideas without End offers the first complete retrospective of 100 of her photographs -- the majority of which have never been published -- from her earliest efforts at the turn of the century to the many now-famous images. A biographical essay by Richard Lorenz, a chronology of Cunningham's life and work, and a bibliography are also included in this superb collection, at once a beautiful portfolio and an enduring tribute to a gifted and compelling artist.

Imogen Cunningham: A portrait

First Edition

60, full page photos by Cunningham from Ansel Adams, Gertrude Stein, Cary Grant, nudes, still lifes, common people, Frida Kahlo

Imogen Cunningham: Flora

Flora showcases Cunninghams fascination with nature, with images that range broadly from simple floral arrangements to elaborate compositions of exotic ferns and lilies.

Imogen Cunningham: On the Body

It's hard to imagine a young woman born in 1883, in the middle of the repressive Victorian era, who possessed absolutely none of the prissy, small-minded modesty of the 19th century. But that is Imogen Cunningham at age 23 in 1906, shooting a nude self-portrait in which "the smooth skin of her shoulders, derrière, and legs glows within the darker context" of the weedy landscape where she is sprawled. There is no artifice about the picture, but her pale form is nonetheless transformed into a "floating arcadian Venus," as author Richard Lorenz aptly describes the image. Most of Cunningham's nudes are identified by name: John Bovington 2, Eye of Portia Hume, Jane Foster, Lake Tenaya, as if to say, "I have used this body, but it belongs to its owner." To one nude model she wrote, "Aperture is putting out a monograph on my work, and YOU are in it. I did not ask you because I know that when you are a work of art, so called, you are no longer yourself." This is Lorenz's fourth book of carefully selected Cunningham photographs, and its subject gives it special resonance. (It includes a chronology and a selected bibliography.) In it, Lorenz quotes a last snippet of Cunningham's writing, found among her papers after she died, at 94: "For it is in this inadequate flesh that each of us must serve his dream, and so, must fail in the dream's service." Even into her 90s, Cunningham continued to love and limn the human body, creating uncommonly frank, deeply humane works of genius. --Peggy Moorman

On the Body, a sumptuous survey, explores the form in intimate detail.

Imogen Cunningham: Photographs

Imogen Cunningham - Photographs

Interviews with master photographers: Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Cornell Capa, Elliott Erwitt, Yousuf Karsh, Arnold Newman, Lord Snowdon, Brett Weston

Imogen Cunningham: Portraiture

Portraiture presents the artists first love and photographic speciality.

Imogen Cunningham 1883 - 1976

Imogen Cunningham, early feminist and master photographer, enjoyed a seventy-year career and fervently worked up until shortly before her death in 1976 at age 93. Both as a woman and an artist, Cunningham made some of the most outstanding historic contributions to fine art photography. Most known for her stunning close-ups of flowers ("Blumenformen"), Cunningham's first love was portraiture, from which she earned her living throughout most of her life. She also made great strides in nude photography, unfettered by the uproar caused by her first nude images in 1910.

Cunningham's daring and brilliant work helped establish photography as an art from. Becoming a photographer was a childhood dream that Cunningham pursued with passionate determination. During her career she photographed thousands of individuals, including a great number of celebrities, writers, and artists such as Herbert Hoover, Ansel Adams, Frida Kahlo, Man Ray, Gertrude Stein, and Cary Grant. Her style was unique, fired by a complex, sensitive, and imaginative vision and a never-ending desire to experiment (she never tired of trying alternative techniques, a favorite of hers being double exposure). Cunningham was not afraid to stand apart from the crowd, her sensual flowers and bold nudes- notably a nude of a pregnant woman from 1946, a photographic first- earning her great respect and admiration from her contemporaries, notably Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.

Imogen Cunningham: Life and Work 1883-1976 gathers together the best of her work from all her genres and includes an extensive illustrated biography and bibliography. Poetic and visionary, the remarkable work of Imogen Cunningham lives on this beautiful new book.