Magnolia Blossom

By 1920 Cunningham's work had begun to move away the soft focus, romantic tendencies of the 1910s toward a more modernist aesthetic. With the influences of the German photographers, Albert Renger-Patzsch and Karl Blossfeldt, she began to explore a cleaner, straightforward investigation of her subject, one independent from many of her contemporaries working in California. In 1909 Cunningham had traveled on a grant to Germany to study and although she made few photographs during her stay, the German culture and aesthetic had made an impression. By the early 1920s she was combining the influences of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), Bauhaus and the American Precisionist movements in her work. Cunningham had always found an attraction to botanical specimens as subject matter and this interest began to develop more fully with her series of images of the magnolia blossom. Between 1923-25 she often came back to this subject and of this series, the Magnolia Blossom, 1925, offered here is the most recognized of this group, as well as one of the most well known works of her career.

Another print of this image on the same paper with the original Mills College label and title in German was sold at Christie's, New York, 5 October 1995, lot 13.