The Tragically Unhip

For the past twelve years, I have been writing to a girl I have never met in the flesh. Despite my busy, haphazard ways I have tried to keep in touch with this dear friend no matter where life has taken me. Though we have never met in person, she is a sort of soul mate of mine, on paper—one to whom I can confide my deepest fears and sentiments and know with full faith that she will write to me on any given day of the week in response to the literary and you-are-there experiences that I relate to her.

We have just begun to pick up our cherished correspondence again via good old analog pen and paper. Upon returning home from an extended (almost 3 weeks!) sojourn on the Eastern Shore, I found the best comfort waiting for me as I unlocked my front door: a letter from Iris. It was card-shaped and in a manila envelope, simply waiting for me to rip it open. It was lovely: a blank card written in fountain pen by Iris herself, the front of the card graced by a black-and-white photograph of Frida Kahlo. I smiled a deep, Cheshire cat-like grin for Iris’s knowing me so well. I looked at the back. Imogen Cunningham was credited with taking the portrait of the Frida Kahlo, and I reached into the far depths of my recollection to remember that Cunningham was like the Georgia O’Keefe of photography, having established her artistry as a noted (but now seemingly forgotten) photographer of botanicals and nudes.

Imogen Cunningham lived to see 93 amazing years and died in San Francisco, California. Her work is to be both admired, studied and truly appreciated as a pioneer of art. She lived as an independent woman who scrimped and saved to buy her first camera, always doubting her capacity as a true artist—biographical commonalities held by so many artists from before and after her time.

The YouYube video compilation that sums up Imogen best in her own words can be found here, in parts.