Leaf Pattern

Within her seven-decade photographic career, Imogen Cunningham is perhaps best known for her work in the 1920s and 1930s: close, clear, abstract images of organic forms, particularly botanical specimens. Photographer Edward Weston, who coordinated the American section of the 1929 exhibition Film und Foto, a major German survey of international photographic modernism, selected eight of her plant studies to join the landmark exhibition. In 1932 Weston and Cunningham joined fellow California photographers in forming Group f/64, named after the aperture on a view camera that generated a maximally sharp image across the full depth of field. Cunningham had sent a set of photographs, including this print of the leaves of a giant honey bush, earlier that year to New York gallerist Julien Levy. Whereas this print features even tones on a matte-finish paper, subsequent prints of the image appear on the glossy, high-contrast paper favored by f/64 members.