{
    "data": {
        "id": 159905,
        "accession_number": "1997.195",
        "share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
        "tombstone": "Snake in Bucket, 1929. Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883\u20131976). Gelatin silver print; image: 16.6 x 21.5 cm (6 9/16 x 8 7/16 in.); paper: 19.8 x 26.5 cm (7 13/16 x 10 7/16 in.); matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1997.195. \u00a9 The Imogen Cunningham Trust",
        "current_location": null,
        "title": "Snake in Bucket",
        "creation_date": "1929",
        "creation_date_earliest": 1929,
        "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: 16.6 x 21.5 cm (6 9/16 x 8 7/16 in.); Paper: 19.8 x 26.5 cm (7 13/16 x 10 7/16 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.)",
        "dimensions": {
            "image": {
                "height": 0.166,
                "height_inch": 6,
                "height_inch_fraction": 0.5625,
                "width": 0.215,
                "width_inch": 8,
                "width_inch_fraction": 0.4375
            },
            "paper": {
                "height": 0.198,
                "height_inch": 7,
                "height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
                "width": 0.265,
                "width_inch": 10,
                "width_inch_fraction": 0.4375
            },
            "matted": {
                "height": 0.406,
                "height_inch": 16,
                "height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
                "width": 0.508,
                "width_inch": 20,
                "width_inch_fraction": 0.0
            }
        },
        "state_of_the_work": null,
        "edition_of_the_work": null,
        "copyright": "\u00a9 The Imogen Cunningham Trust",
        "inscriptions": [],
        "exhibitions": {
            "current": [
                {
                    "id": 194095,
                    "title": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
                    "description": "<i>Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art</i>. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007).",
                    "opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
                }
            ],
            "legacy": [
                {
                    "description": "The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 24 - July 2, 1973: \"Photographs by Imogen Cunningham,\" listed no. 23 in exhibition catalogue.",
                    "opening_date": "1973-04-24T00:00:00"
                },
                {
                    "description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art (6/24/07 - 9/16/07); \"Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art\", no exhibition catalogue.",
                    "opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
                }
            ]
        },
        "provenance": [],
        "find_spot": null,
        "related_works": [],
        "former_accession_numbers": [],
        "did_you_know": null,
        "early_education_description": null,
        "artlens_description": null,
        "description": "In the early 1920s, Cunningham abandoned her pictorial style, which relied on soft focus and soft printing, and instead embraced the emerging modernist approach, objectively presenting visual facts with clarity and directness. At the beginning and end of that same decade, she took a limited number of photographs of snakes. This stunning image from 1929 is one of a few photographs she made of a snake in a bucket. By setting up her 8-by-10-inch view camera near her subject, Cunningham intentionally suppressed descriptive information about the container\u2019s shape, texture, and position. She concentrated on the elaborate pattern of the snake\u2019s skin and its flowing form, approaching this photograph as if on one of her commercial portrait assignments.",
        "external_resources": {
            "wikidata": [
                "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79980263"
            ],
            "internet_archive": []
        },
        "citations": [
            {
                "citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, \u201cMajor European Porcelain Crucifix, Pre-Columbian Figure, and Other Works Added to CMA Collection,\u201d December 3, 1997, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
                "page_number": null,
                "url": "https://archive.org/details/cmapr4165"
            }
        ],
        "url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1997.195",
        "images": {},
        "alternate_images": [],
        "creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
        "image_credit": null,
        "sketchfab_id": null,
        "sketchfab_url": null,
        "gallery_donor_text": null,
        "athena_id": 159905,
        "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": "1997-12-01T00:00:00",
        "sortable_date": 1929,
        "date_added_to_oa": null,
        "date_text": "1929",
        "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": "2026-05-01 06:52:06.882000"
    }
}