Imogen Cunningham

07/05/2011 16:37 By Unknown , In secondary research

" My interest in photography has something to do with the aesthetic, and that there should be a little beauty in everything. "

http://www.dptips-central.com/imogen-cunningham.html

Even though her first love was portraiture, Imogen Cunningham is most known for her stunning and sensual close-ups of flowers.

Her work in the 1920s contrasts with her earlier pictorialist photographs. Her childhood fascination with the beauty and complexities of nature led her to photograph all kinds of plant life, from simple flower arrangements to elaborate compositions of exotic ferns, magnolias and lilies.

Her floral studies were influenced by stark lines and were mainly of close-ups, as she believed the "paradox of expansion via reduction becomes vivid when one looks at the visual aspect of nature", 

each level of detail is echoed in the next lager and smaller level of scale.

Stylistically, she empowered her image by isolating her vegetation. What would be lost in a mass is curiously fresh and clear in solitary study. As a result "negative space became as critical to the composition as the design elements", in fact she paralleled the objectivity of the German modernists, her close-up, sensual photographs of house plants, flowers, leaves and pods often resemble animals, birds, fish and human forms.

I have researched Imogen Cunningham’s work before for photography projects, and I decided to research her again as I wondered whether I would find anything new about her. I have discovered that she made links between the human form and flowers, which links in with my own work. Looking through her photographs, I can try and use her techniques of using close-up shots to represent the human form as hers often did.