Figurehead (Sailing Vessel)
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Object Details
Artist/Maker
Alma Lavenson, American, 1897–1989
Date
1932
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Please contact the Museum for more information
Credit
Gift of L. Wahrhaftig
Accession #
2000.226
Description
Alma Lavenson, who first learned photography by watching a technician develop pictures at the local drugstore, is recognized as one of the leading West Coast photographers of the 1920s and 1930s. Along with her mentor Imogen Cunningham, she was a founding member of Ansel Adams’s influential Group f/64, a movement that embraced a straight, unmanipulated approach to photography. This dizzying view of a ship’s prow, with its dynamic lines and patterning of light and ropes, epitomizes Lavenson’s distinctively modern approach to form and subject matter.