Triangles
| Artist | Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883–1976) |
|---|---|
| Title | Triangles |
| Date | 1928 |
| Medium | Gelatin silver print |
| Dimensions | Image: 3 13/16 × 2 13/16 in. (9.7 × 7.1 cm) Sheet: 3 13/16 × 2 13/16 in. (9.7 × 7.1 cm) Mount: 10 1/2 × 8 in. (26.7 × 20.3 cm) Mount: 12 3/16 × 9 1/8 in. (31 × 23.1 cm) Mat: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.7 cm) |
| Credit Line | Henry Holmes Smith Archive, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University |
| Accession Number | 79.200.X.9.1 |
| This artwork is currently off display. You may be able to see this artwork by filling out an art viewing room request. | |
A vertical black-and-white photograph depicts the side view of a light-skinned, adult woman's body. Her left breast is most visible, as well has portions of her left arm, left leg, and torso.
While a college student studying chemistry at the University of Washington, Imogen Cunningham worked as an assistant to the portrait photographer Edward Curtis. She went on to study photographic chemistry in Dresden, Germany, returning in 1910 to establish her own portrait studio in Seattle. Her early work reflects the influence of the pictorial photography of Gertrude Kasebier. Another strong influce was the nineteenth-century portrait photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who, like Cunningham, often photographer writers and artists. Cunningham even dressed her friends in exotic clothes and posed them in tableaux in the manner of Cameron. However, in the 1920s she moved to northern California and rejected pictorialism in favor of a new international style. Her works, such as Triangles, emphasized a growing interest in abstraction in photography. In 1925, she produced Magnolia Blossom, her first in a series of closeups of plants. Cunningham became a pioneer of modernism and founded the f/64 Group, along with Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, which promoted a straightforward style of photography. Although she taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, Cunningham thought of herself as a self-emplyed photographer.
Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.
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"Triangles | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2025. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=79.200.X.9.1