{
"data": {
"id": 152665,
"accession_number": "1985.47",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Agave Design I, 1920s. Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883\u20131976). Gelatin silver print; image: 34.8 x 27 cm (13 11/16 x 10 5/8 in.); matted: 55.9 x 45.7 cm (22 x 18 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The A. W. Ellenberger, Sr., Endowment Fund, 1985.47. \u00a9 The Imogen Cunningham Trust",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Agave Design I",
"creation_date": "1920s",
"creation_date_earliest": 1920,
"creation_date_latest": 1929,
"artists_tags": [
"female"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "gelatin silver print",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - American 1900-1950",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 34.8 x 27 cm (13 11/16 x 10 5/8 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 45.7 cm (22 x 18 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.348,
"width": 0.27
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.559,
"width": 0.457
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 The Imogen Cunningham Trust",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on recto: \"Imogen Cunninghan 1920\"; in pencil on verso: \"79:034\"; typed on label: \"Agave Design I, 1920s\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 299125,
"title": "From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression",
"description": "From Riches to Rags: American Photography in the Depression. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 13-December 31, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2017-08-13T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Stanford Art Gallery, Stanford University, March 31 - April 23, 1967: Imogen Cunningham, photographs, 1921-1967, p. 4 of exhibition catalogue.",
"opening_date": "1967-03-31T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, February 12 - April 20, 1986: \"Year in Review 1985,\" CMA Bulletin, 73 (Feb. 1986), p. 66, no. 94.",
"opening_date": "1986-02-12T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, August 28 - October 3, 1993: \"Die Poesie der Form (The Poetry of Form),\" Schaffhausen : Edition Stemmle.",
"opening_date": "1993-08-28T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"description": "After Cunningham closed a successful portrait studio to devote herself to parenting her three sons, she continued photographing. \u201cBecause I couldn\u2019t get out anywhere, and I had a garden,\u201d said Cunningham, she photographed her plants every afternoon when her children were napping. These were not picture-postcard views but extreme close-ups of plants that emphasize light and dark contrasts, detail, form, and pattern. Like this iconic image, they were unmanipulated depictions of flora, yet, at the same time, boldly abstract images. Cunningham helped blaze a trail for the recognition of photography as an art form that could go beyond documentation to explore pure expression and visual experimentation.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79937815"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 134",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1985.47",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "The A. W. Ellenberger, Sr., Endowment Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 152665,
"creators": [
{
"id": 337,
"description": "Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883\u20131976)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Imogen Cunningham American, 1883-1976\r\n\r\nBorn in Portland, Oregon, Imogen Cunningham became one of America's most admired photographers during a career that spanned seven decades. She took her first photographs in Seattle in 1901 and later worked for photographer Edward S. Curtis (1907-9). While assisting in Curtis's studio, Cunningham learned the platinum printing process, a technique she used for the soft-focus pictorial style she then favored.\r\n\tIn 1910, upon her return to Seattle after a year studying photographic chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden, Cunningham opened a portrait studio. She moved to San Francisco with her husband, Roi Partridge, in 1917 and in the 1920s began a series of sharply focused, closeup studies of plant forms. Emphasizing light, form, and abstract pattern, these images were included in Film und Foto, the influential exhibition of avant-garde photography and film held in Stuttgart in 1929. Three years later, Cunningham joined Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and others in forming Group f/64.\r\n\tThroughout her long career Cunningham exhibited her work widely and was featured in several documentaries. Among retrospectives of her photography were Imogen! Imogen Cunningham Photographs 1910-1973, at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington (1974), and A Centennial Selection at the California Academy of Arts and Sciences, San Francisco (1983). Her subject matter ranged from portraits and closeup studies of plants, flowers, and nudes to unconventional views of modern architecture. Portraiture, however, held special interest. When Cunningham died in 1976, she was working on a book featuring portraits of people over 90 years of age (published posthumously in 1977 as After Ninety). M.M.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1883",
"death_year": "1976",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1985-03-25T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1920,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1920s",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-03-27 00:05:15.396000"
}
}