Following further studies of photochemistry in Dresden, Germany, Cunningham returned to the West Coast, where she exhibited regularly and founded her own portrait studio.
After earning a degree in chemistry at the University of Washington (1907), Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) trained in the Seattle studio of Edward Curtis (1868-1952), a specialist in genre and portrait photographs of Native American tribespeople. Following further studies of photochemistry in Dresden, Germany, Cunningham returned to the West Coast, where she exhibited regularly and founded her own portrait studio. She is best remembered together with Edward Weston and Ansel Adams as a member of f/64, the 1930s group whose crisp, technically precise abstractions shaped the course of art photography in America.