Seattle Art Museum: Press Release

SEATTLE, June 5, 2009 – Beginning this week, the Seattle Art Museum presents Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham. Drawn entirely from the Seattle Art Museum’s permanent collection, Everything Under the Sun features forty-eight photographs spanning the artist’s career from 1915 to 1973. The exhibition is on view July 11, 2009 through August 29, 2010.

Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976) dedicated her life to her art, becoming one of the most well-known photographers from the Northwest. Born in Portland and beginning her career as a photographer in Seattle, Cunningham worked at a time when female photographers were few. She purchased her first camera as a teenager, and pursued her interest in the medium through college. In 1907, Cunningham graduated with a degree in chemistry from the University of Washington; her undergraduate thesis focused on “Modern Processes of Photography.” From 1907-09, she worked in the Seattle portrait studio of Edward Curtis, and a year later opened her own portrait studio on First Hill in Seattle, which she operated from 1910-1917. As a professional photographer, she encouraged other women to join the field and in 1913 published an article “Photography as a Profession for Women.” During this period, she photographed her husband, Roi Partridge on Mt. Rainier National Park. In 1920 she and her family moved to San Francisco, where her work began to also include studies of botanical and other natural subjects, and where she cofounded Group f/64, which sought a modernist aesthetic through photography of natural and found objects.

Curated by Marisa C. Sánchez, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at SAM, Everything Under the Sun features still lifes, portraits, landscapes and more. The exhibition reveals Cunningham’s inquisitive eye – from portraits of Frida Kahlo, Alfred Stieglitz, and other well-known artists of her time, to views of her husband on Mt. Rainier, considered some of the first known published photographs of a male nude taken by a female photographer (in 1916), and much more. The photographs on view demonstrate the breadth and range of Cunningham’s artistic vision and showcase one of the strengths of SAM’s photography collection.

Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham is organized by the Seattle Art Museum.

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Seattle Art Museum Presents Seminal Works of Northwest Native in Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham

Photographs drawn exclusively
from SAM permanent collection.

Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham
July 11, 2009–August 29, 2010

Seattle Art Museum Presents Seminal Works of Northwest Native in Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham

Photographs drawn exclusively from SAM permanent collection.

Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham July 11, 2009–August 29, 2010

Photographs drawn exclusively
from SAM permanent collection.

Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogen Cunningham
July 11, 2009–August 29, 2010