FUJIFILM STUDENT AWARDS-Imogen Cunningham

Imogen Cunningham was born in Portland, Oregon in 1883. She was well educated from a young age, with her father having encouraged her to read before she entered school, he also paid for her to have private art lessons every summer.
Strangely Cunningham graduated from Washington University with a Major in Chemistry, this was after advise from a tutor that she should have a background in science if she wanted to be a photographer. Her thesis was titled "Modern Processes of Photography" which shows her interest in the chemistry of photography as well.
Cunningham later worked in a studio, then studied photographic chemistry in Dresden before returning home where she set up her own studio.
Cunningham has done a lot of work with varied subject matter, including portraits, landscapes, still lifes etc. Some of my favourite work from her collections include her Nudes work and her Botanicals work. Her style is obvious, she uses black and white film, really making the use of shadows and lines in her work. Many of her images have a small depth of field, sometimes with the image being 90 percent soft focus along with the tonal quality this gives the images a certain depth, as if you could reach out and touch the subject.

This is an example of Cunningham's work titled Calla. It displays the shadowing and lines I was talking about. The curve of the flower leads the eye around to the middle of the image and the stem of the flower. The flower has high amounts of detail in the petal area, giving an added texture to the image. The shadowing give depth however it isn't a harsh shadow breaking the image up, it softly leads the eye around the curve of the flower.The flower appears as if you could reach out and touch it, this is what I want my images to be like. The lighting is very soft and flattering to the flower it is very natural complimenting the natural subject of the image.


This is another example of Cunningham's botanical work titled Spines, about 1925. This is different to the above image with it's soft lines and lighting giving a soft texture. This image uses harsher lighting and has a much stronger feel to it. This eye is still very concentrated on the lines of the image, which in this case are very  straight and angular giving it that strong feeling. This image is much more abstract making it hard to see what the subject is without the use of the title.



 

This is an example of Cunningham's nude work. Titled Nude, 1932. This is another piece of work that is inspirational to me. I prefer this more tasteful image of the subject where little can be seen, compared to some of her other nude images which are much more revealing. This image is taken in a very similar style to the image above of the Lilly, using flattering soft lighting. The eye is concentrated again upon the lines and curves within the image. I like how at first glance the subject is not necessarily identified as a person, the image has become very abstract. The image is very natural, and works well positioned next to the flower above. The body could resemble a natural item such as a flower or a vegetable, it does remind me somewhat of a mushroom and I believe it would work well as a series of natural studies.

I have really enjoyed looking at Cunningham's work, her image making is so varied yet all seems to have a similar style. I want to take her use of lines within an image, and experiment with this in my image making. I also like the way she makes her subject more abstract, I haven't done much work with abstract things before so this could be interesting to try. The abstract style will also fit well with the brief of extreme. The black and white aspect of her images is important in making the eye focus on other things within the image, such as the lines and depth it is also important I believe in making the subject even more abstract. I will need to think about this when selecting my film of choice.