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| Imogen Cunningham: On the Body | 
| Author: Richard Lorenz
Creator: Imogen Cunningham
Publisher: Bulfinch Press
Category: Book
List Price: $50.00
Buy Used: $29.95
You Save: $20.05 (40%)
Collectible (2) from $95.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 974945
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 168
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 12.4 x 9.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0821224387
Dewey Decimal Number: 779.092
EAN: 9780821224380
ASIN: 0821224387
Publication Date: November 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: General wear, good condition. DA102808 All US orders shipped with delivery confirmation. Thanks!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
It's hard to imagine a young woman born in 1883, in the middle of the repressive Victorian era, who possessed absolutely none of the prissy, small-minded modesty of the 19th century. But that is Imogen Cunningham at age 23 in 1906, shooting a nude self-portrait in which "the smooth skin of her shoulders, derriere, and legs glows within the darker context" of the weedy landscape where she is sprawled. There is no artifice about the picture, but her pale form is nonetheless transformed into a "floating arcadian Venus," as author Richard Lorenz aptly describes the image. Most of Cunningham's nudes are identified by name: John Bovington 2, Eye of Portia Hume, Jane Foster, Lake Tenaya, as if to say, "I have used this body, but it belongs to its owner." To one nude model she wrote, "Aperture is putting out a monograph on my work, and YOU are in it. I did not ask you because I know that when you are a work of art, so called, you are no longer yourself." This is Lorenz's fourth book of carefully selected Cunningham photographs, and its subject gives it special resonance. (It includes a chronology and a selected bibliography.) In it, Lorenz quotes a last snippet of Cunningham's writing, found among her papers after she died, at 94: "For it is in this inadequate flesh that each of us must serve his dream, and so, must fail in the dream's service." Even into her 90s, Cunningham continued to love and limn the human body, creating uncommonly frank, deeply humane works of genius. --Peggy Moorman
Product Description
Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) was a pioneer of 20th-century photography, an artist whose work significantly contributed to the acceptance of the medium as an art form. She devoted her life to her craft and photographed continuously and passionately for over 70 years. Her images of the body explore the human form in great detail: eyes, ears, heads, hands, breasts, feet. Many of her images have become well-known and popular icons in the history of photography. This book presents an overview of Cunningham's figure studies dating from 1906 through to 1976, the year of her death. More than half the images had never been published before the hardcover edition of this book. Although the majority of the photographs date from the 1920s and 1930s, her later work in this genre continued to be compelling and provocative. An illustrated essay discusses Cunningham's interest in the human form, influences on her work and comparable images by Cunningham's contemporaries. A chronology of Cunningham's life and a selected bibliography are also included.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 The Most Humane September 29, 2008
Cunningham's photographs of the unclothed human convey the warmest, most familial feeling one can find in this area of photography. One hesitates to speak of her nude studies as part of a genre, because the personality of her subject is always felt, more than any abstraction or ideation (except in her early work).
 "You might say I invented the nude." July 23, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
A bold statement for her to make, even when limited to the photographic nude. Earlier photos of people without clothes generally served scientific purposes (like Muybridge's), or salacious ones. The artistic, even abstract photographic nude may in fact be Cunningham's invention.
This samples Cunningham's career, from 1906 to 1976, from age 23 to the year of her death. That artistic longevity, if nothing else, is worthy of note. But the real strngth of the collection is in the photos themselves.
The abstract photos, like 'Helen' (plate 42) and 'Roi' (plate 34) are utterly literal and utterly baffling. Each is a simple picture, but shows just how complex the interaction of human figure and viewpoint can be. Many, like plates 44 and 51, are simple celebrations of form. One thing struck me, again and again. Modern photographers often present a figure that's made up and airbrushed to polyethylene perfection - something strangely inhuman. Cunningham captures the human animal more precisely, in the delicate down of feminine skin (plate 43), the scars that record events in a person's life (plates 49 and maybe 72), goosebumps (plate 27), even stretch marks on a woman richly pregnant (plate 98). These details add depth to Cunningham's work, offering something new at every level of detail in her pictures.
I highly recommend this collection, especially as it documents one of the visions that founded modern photographic style.
//wiredweird
Before Her Time January 27, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Imogen Cunningham brings to light an eye for the simplest beauty. The photographs contained within this book are diverse with studies in children, families, the male nude, the female nude, textures in nature and some in more familiar home environs. I am particularly fond of her portraits in the book as well as her fleshier pieces. She has absolutely beautiful composition and creates incredible foils for the human skin to be set off by. I love to use the book's photographs for reference when I am painting. It is an essential in my collection.
Fine Art Photography Finely Presented July 18, 2002
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The beauty of the works of Imogen Cunningham to this day remain staggering. Knowing that the photographs are early contributions to the genre of nude photography is even more amazing. Yes, compared to some of today's art photographers the poses may appear a bit static and stagey, but the quality of composition, of light and shadow, of clarity of vision is still hard to match. This is an historically important volume and one of great beauty. The accompanying essay is brief but sensitive and informative.
Imogen at her finest October 18, 2001
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
It is astonishing to think that the images Imogen made came from such an early age in photography. Starting in 1906, Imogen made pictures of the human body that stand out as the finest today. These images have been lusciously reproduced in this book that plots the history and progress of Imogen through her career. What a pioneering career it must have been. The subjects of her lens were almost unheard of in those days where the showing of an ankle was scandalous. She makes no technical concessions whatever; each exposure is exactly in needle-sharp focus and rendered in smooth gradual tones of the highest quality process. She must have had strict discipline to technical detail to have consistently produced this quality of images, there is no other way. I would have loved to have known her. The things she could tell a fellow photographer must have been volumes. You cannot be disappointed by this book.
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