Imogen Cunningham

titled and dated by the photographer in ink in the margin, her printing notations in pencil and her '1331, Green Street, San Francisco, 9' studio stamp on the reverse, matted, 1928, probably printed in the 1950s

Acquired from the photographer by the present owner, 1973

New York Public Library, A History of Women Photographers, October 1996 - January 1997; and traveling to:

Washington, D. C., The National Museum of Women in the Arts, February - May 1997

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, June - August 1997

Akron Art Museum, September - November 1997

Naomi Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers (New York, 2000, 2nd ed.), pl. 155 (this print)

Other prints of this image:

Richard Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas without End (San Francisco, 1993), pl. 55

Richard Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: On the Body (Boston, 1998), pl. 35

Richard Lorenz and Manfred Heiting, eds., Imogen Cunningham: 1883 - 1976 (Köln, 2001), p. 43

Constance Sullivan, ed., Nude Photographs, 1850 - 1980 (New York, 1980), pl. 44

Michael Köhler, ed., The Body Exposed: Views of the Body, 150 Years of the Nude in Photography (Zürich, 1995), p. 90

Barbara Haskell, The American Century: Art & Culture, 1900 - 1950 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 206

This slightly warm-toned print, on double-weight paper with a slight surface sheen, is in generally excellent condition. The title and date are in purple ink. There is a small gray deposit at the lower right corner in the margin. When examined with a black light, this print appears to fluoresce slightly.
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The subjects of this 1928 image are two sisters, Helen and Jackie Greaves, who were students at Mills College when the photograph was taken.  The sitting took place in Edward Weston's Glendale studio, and a number of studies were made.  In addition to the 'Figures' offered here, there was a photograph taken of Jackie Greaves alone (reproduced in Richard Lorenz's Imogen Cunningham: Frontiers, fig. 45), another of one of the sisters alone, of the two sisters in a different pose (Lorenz, Cunningham: On the Body, figs. 23 and 24), and a variety of images of the two sisters in seated and reclining positions (Taschen Editions, Imogen Cunningham, pls. 42, 44, and 45), among others.  The most famous image to emerge from this session is Imogen Cunningham's signature nude study, 'Triangles.'  All were made from 4-by-5-inch negatives. 

The present photograph shows Cunningham in what is perhaps the final phase of her transition from Pictorialism to modernism.  The diffuse focus and narrative themes of her turn-of-the-century nudes have here given way to a rigorous composition of angles, shadows, and shapes. 

Early prints of any of the Greaves sisters series are scarce.  Other than posthumous or later prints, no prints of 'Two Sisters' have appeared at auction in the past two decades.  The print offered here, one of the few extant prints of the image, was exhibited in the New York Public Library's History of Women Photographers show, and traveled with that exhibition.