few photographs on her travels, she was inspired by
the great museums of Europe and by the artists
that she came into contact with in Paris and Lon-
don. After a stop in New York, she returned to
Seattle in September 1910, opened a portrait stu-
dio, and began to exhibit her work, which was
often portraits of close friends.
As a female photographer, Cunningham took
some risks early in her photographic career. One
risk was her avid interest in nude photography in
an era in America still suffering from the conserva-
tism of the Victorian era. In support of the idea of
the modern, independent female, she also pub-
lished an article called ‘‘Photography as a Profes-
sion for Women’’ in her sorority’s journalThe
Arrow in 1913 in which she urged women to
develop their own style in photography and other
professions rather than merely trying to copy what
men were doing. This conviction—risky for its
time—she held throughout her life.
One of the most notable influences on her work
during this early formative period was the art she
viewed in the avant-garde periodicalCamera Work
published by Alfred Stieglitz. In this quarterly, she
was introduced to many of the new young, experi-
mental photographers that Cunningham would
later come to know personally. Although Stieglitx
discontinued publishingCamera Workin 1917, and
she never made it into the journal herself, the type of
photographic work illustrated—the beginnings of
the clean, modern style—influenced her work
throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to
Camera Work,Vanity Fairalso drew her attention
during her mid-teens with its progressive studies of
nudes and its pages portraying avant-garde culture.
In 1914, her first solo exhibition was displayed
at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. In
February the following year, she married Seattle
etcher Roi Partridge, with whom she had corre-
sponded by letter for two years while he was in
Europe studying art. When the war forced him to
return to the United States, he became Cunning-
ham’s husband and model. Their first son, Gryf-
fyd, was born in December of that same year.
The following year, she published what was then
considered a risque ́ nude photograph of her hus-
band in the Christmas issue of Seattle’s The
Town Crier.
The family moved to San Francisco in 1917,
where Cunningham gave birth to twin sons Rondal
and Padraic; she spent the next few years with her
three young children, restricting herself to photo-
graphing close friends, family, and the plants in her
garden, which would be a focal point of her experi-
mental work throughout the 1920s.
She returned to commercial portraiture in 1921
after her family moved to Oakland and her hus-
band took a teaching position at Mills College.
During these years, she and Partridge became part
of a group of artists that included Edward Weston,
Dorothea Lange, and Anne Brigman. Cunningham
stretched her artistic horizon toward avant-garde
experimentalism; and, like many other young
artists, she was greatly influenced by publications
such asVanity Fair’s October 1922 issue which
included Man Ray’s now infamous portrait of the
Marchesa Casati. This double exposure influenced
Cunningham’s portraiture and turned her focus to
more abstract details apparent in photographs such
asTwo Callas (1929). She was also affected by
Marcel Duchamp’s famous Dada paintingNude
Descending a Staircase (No. 2).
By the end of the 1920s, her works were routinely
made as double-exposures, and she experimented
with different techniques, using plants and portrai-
ture as her subjects. She also continued her studies
of the nude—often using her husband Partridge
and three children as models.
The end of the decade was punctuated by a local
exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum, in which she
showed works from her plants series, and, more
importantly, by her participation in the seminalFilm
und Fotoexhibition in Stuttgart, Germany, in which
she displayed 10 prints of what have become some of
her best-known photographs, including studies of
fleshy, spiky agave, aloe plants, and calla lillies.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Cunningham moved
away from the close-up, sharply focused studies
of plants and avant-garde experimentalism of the
20s toward celebrity portraiture and then street
photography. In 1931, she exhibited at the M.H.
de Young Memorial Museum, and after two
photographs of the dancer Martha Graham were
published in the December 1931 issue ofVanity
Fair, the editors asked her to take assignments
photographing personalities including actors Spen-
cer Tracy, Cary Grant, Joan Blondell, and James
Cagney, and President Herbert Hoover. She
divorced Partridge in 1934 and moved to New
York for a short time to shoot more forVanity
Fairincluding photographs of President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt’s mother, Mrs. James Roosevelt,
but she soon returned to California to her to be
closer to her sons. She continued her portraiture,
which included such varied personalities as the
writer Gertrude Stein, Mexican painter Frida
Kahlo, and writer Upton Sinclair, who was then
seeking the California governorship.
She joined Group f/64, organized by Willard
Van Dyke in 1932 and including Edward WestonCUNNINGHAM, IMOGEN