Imogen Cunningham

Collection of Alta C. Hoover, the subject of the photograph

Gift of the above to Dr. Ward Rasmus and Jack Plotkin, Los Angeles, circa 1963

By descent to the present owner

Richard Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: On the Body (Boston, 1998) pl. 44

On the delicately warm-toned, nearly matte-surface paper that Imogen Cunningham favored in the 1920s, this print of Sunbath (Alta on the Beach) is exceedingly rare. It is one of just four known early prints of the image. Only one other early example of this image has been offered at auction: a slightly larger print (measuring 8 ¾ by 8 ¾ inches) sold at Sotheby’s in October 1998. Two other early prints have been located at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Gift of David Bakalar; and in a private California collection. 

The photograph offered here comes originally from the collection of its subject, Alta Cooney Hoover (1897-1979), a friend of Cunningham and the wife of Glenn Hoover, a professor of economics at Mills College. Accompanying this photograph is a handwritten history of its ownership, which provides fascinating insight into Alta’s life after leaving Mills College, including a long tenure working with the American Red Cross. 

Cunningham made a series of negatives of Alta on the beach: aside from the image offered here, the other views focus on specific areas of her body—Alta’s braceleted arm, a knee overcrossed with her two arms, her face partially obscured by hair (see Imogen Cunningham: On the Body, pls. 51-55). Cunningham’s exploration of the nude as a subject for her photography began early in her career when she produced in 1906 an outdoor nude study of herself. The nude form, both male and female, continued to provide her with inspiration, and the resulting images kept pace with her development as a photographer.   

“While stylistically divided, Cunningham’s oeuvre is consistent in its devotion to the subject of sexuality, male and female. She is one of the few photographers ever to produce striking nude images of both genders, and even when she combines them into a single frame, as she did in her 1923 Torso, there is never anything prurient about it.” (Andy Grundberg, quoted in Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective, p. 39)

By the 1920s, Cunningham had begun to distance herself from the painterly qualities of pictorial photography and produce images of the body that concentrated on abstract form. Sunbath (Alta on the Beach) is a triumph in its tonal subtleties, rhythmic forms, and tight, complex composition. As with Torso from 1923 and her iconic Triangles from 1928, the masterfully rendered print offered here is the result of Cunningham’s deliberate cropping. In cropping out a portion of the left and upper sides of the image, Cunningham transforms the original rectangular image into a dynamically geometric composition that fits tightly into its square frame.