Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976) was born on April 12, 1883, in Portland, Oregon, and studied chemistry at the University of Washington, graduating in 1907 — a time when the university offered no formal art degree. A sorority fellowship then funded a year of study in photographic chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden, Germany, from 1909 to 1910. On returning to Seattle, she opened her own portrait studio in 1910. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, she became a founding member of Group f/64 when it formed in 1932 alongside Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, championing sharply focused, unmanipulated photography of plants, nudes, and industrial subjects. Her botanical studies, including Magnolia Blossom (1925) and Two Callas (c. 1929), remain among her best-known work. Beginning in 1931, when two of her Martha Graham studies appeared in the magazine’s December issue, she worked as a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair, going on to photograph Hollywood personalities until the magazine ceased publication in 1936. She began teaching intermittently at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1947, later teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute as well, and continued photographing actively into her nineties — including portrait sittings for her late-life project After Ninety. Cunningham died in San Francisco on June 23, 1976.