Ruth Asawa and Her Wire Sculpture
- Gelatin Silver Print
- 17 x 14 x 1.75 in
- Imogen Cunningham
American photographer Imogen Cunningham remains best known for her nudes, botanical studies and portraits. Although Cunningham started working as a professional photographer in 1907, she only began to receive widespread recognition in 1929 when Edward Weston selected ten of her images for Film und Foto, a group exhibition in Stuttgart. In 1932, she became one of the founding members of Group f/64, a group of eleven San Francisco-based photographers that eschewed the dreamy softness of Pictorialism in favor of a more realistic, sharply focused aesthetic. Cunningham remained a prolific photographer until her death at age 93. As the photographer Arnold Newman recalled of his friend, Imogen, "She started very young when there were a few women photographers, but most of them were photographing very daintily, while Imogen was doing really serious photography. Nice girls didn’t do that, but she used to say with a gleam in her eye, 'But I wasn’t a nice girl.'
Cunningham and Ruth Asawa were close friends and neighbors. Over their more than two decade friendship, Cunningham continually photographed Asawa and her work, recording her sculptures and process. In the words of critic Alex Greenberger, “Cunningham’s most iconic images may be her ones featuring the artist Ruth Asawa, whose precious sculptures constructed from wire have accrued a major following. Having met Asawa through her son, Cunningham became close with the sculptor and shot key pictures of her at work. In a letter recommending Asawa for a Guggenheim Fellowship, Cunningham wrote, ‘To me she is what I call an unfailingly creative person and there are very few of them.’