Imogen Cunningham Exhibit

This past Saturday, I went to the Oceanside Museum of Art to see the Imogen Cunningham exhibit.  Ironically I have been in this area many times before to browse in shops and have a nice walk, but I had never actually visited the museum before.  I brought along my iPhone to document it.  The exhibit itself had soft green and white walls with numerous photos of botanicals, as well as a self portrait.  Every photo was black and white.

Each botanical photo was a close up of a flower, leaf, or other part of a plant.  Most of her photos pictured the flower as a whole, but several showed extreme close ups of just one part of the flower.  Her use of contrast and framing is striking and made the photos quite eye-catching despite the every day subject matter.  Some of her photos even made the plants look like something else entirely; for example, Colletia Cruciata 7 almost looked like a multitude of airplanes at first glance.

The walls also bore plaques describing parts of Imogen’s life as relating to photography.  One described her photography group, Group f/64.  The group did not last long, but it emphasized crisp focus throughout the photo during a time when soft focus was popular.  Considering Imogen’s photos on display were all completely clear and focused, this makes sense.  Another plaque mentions Imogen ordering a special Chinese seal to identify her work by.  A third plaque sits with a small display of photos and talks about Ansel Adams and Karl Blossfeldt, two of Imogen’s contemporaries.  These photos belong to these two people, not Imogen.

The end of the exhibit has three old cameras of the same type that Imogen used.  There is a recording of an interview with the photography from when she was in her old age.  It was a bit of a sad note to end on, but I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibit.  I think that it is interesting that she focused on the structure of plants and flowers, rather than the color.  This style lent itself to more dramatic photos, even with a still object.