Form Photographer Research

             Imogen Cunningham

 Imogen Cunningham was an American photographer who was well known for her form and nude photography. She photographed objects in a intriguing way, catching the eye of many people. She used shadow a lot during her form photography work which clearly has an effect of drawing people in. She focused a lot of living objects such as flowers; taking into account that she focused of form, living objects probably intrigued her because of the way they naturally grow and therefore, the form that they hold.

  This picture was taken by Imogen Cunningham and is of flowers. She is popularly known for her photographing of objects which represent form. The flowers are casted in different lightings - the flower at the back is barely visible and we can only really see the outline of the form. This outlines the fact that the details of the object are not really important, but only the form is. She has incorporated tone within her work to create dark shadows. The flowers present a spiral shape and they all roll into one. Most of Imogen's work is in black and white which creates strong and powerful contrasting effects.

This picture was also taken by Imogen and is again of a flower. The flower holds an unusual form and is hard to work out what type of flower it is. It again holds the spiral shape which is interesting to the eye. There are some serious contrasted tones here which is important when photographing form because shadows and lights and the intensity that they are can change the form of an object completely. For example, the bottom section of the photograph contains an intense shade of black; this makes it hard to work out what the object is because we cannot clearly see the form which it holds. There are other objects in the picture but they are not dominant. Objects such as the spikey plant are also intriguing to look at because they hold an unusual shape. Imogen has consciously picked out particular objects to photograph and positioned them in a specific way to create a photograph that draws people in.

Here is another example of Imogen Cunningham's work. When looking at her work, it is not difficult to see that it presents a pattern; she focuses of similar objects especially flowers. Despite this, she photographs them in different ways, showing different amount of specific tones each time. For example, there are more soft tones in this picture compared to the ones pictured above. I like this photograph of hers because the background is muffled and isn't just one block colour; it almost looks like someone has smeared different grey and white tones together, The form of the vase which the flowers sit in is vague and almost is camouflaged into the background - we can only see a mere outline of it. The flowers all hold a similar form to one another which would appear bland to some people if Imogen had photographed it normally.