Imogen Cunningham: Symbolist
Imogen Cunningham/William Morris
What influence, one might wonder, could William Morris, poet, Utopian Socialist, revolutionary, English Arts and Crafts movement leader, textile and furniture designer,Pre-Raphaelite, a founder of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and creator of the Kelmscott Press, have had on the work of the great Modernist American photographer Imogen Cunningham? Hardly any, one might assume. Yet she claimed him as an influence, and his influence was intellectual, social, and visual.
Cunningham’s work became more “Modernist” in appearance with the passage of time; however, that was not where it began. Her first major work was a powerful series of photographs inspired, she claimed, by Morris’s writings. - from the Introduction by John Wood