Like most photographers in the early
twentieth century, Imogen Cunningham worked in the pictorialist style of soft
focus and idyllic poses. By 1917, having left Seattle for the San Francisco
area, she began to move away from Pictorialism.

Although Cunningham had come under
the influence of Alvin Langdon Coburn's Modernism, by 1920, she had begun to
shift her efforts to a more straightforward documenta1y style. Mixing Modernist
beliefs with her new documentary style, she made abstracted "straight"
images throughout the rest of her career.

Also in 1920, she met Edward Weston
in Oakland and his partner Margrethe Mather, with whom she exhibited in 1921. A
decade later Cunningham and Weston formed the influential photography group f/64 with Ansel Adams,
Willard Van Dyke, and others. One of only six known portraits Cunningham made
of Weston and Mather together, this is the most intimate and idyllic in its
softly lighted and focused Pictorialism.

Only one other image, presumably
taken at the same time, approaches the romanticism of this portrait. In the remaining
four photographs, the couple is situated in intimate proximity but seem detached from
one another.

There are two mistakes in Cunningham's title
and date, found on the mat. First, despite dating the image 1923, Cunningham
and her husband, artist Roi Partridge, only visited Weston and Mather once at
his Glendale, California, studio-in July 1922. Weston is known to have last photographed
Mather in April1923. By July 1923 Weston had begun his affair with Tina Modotti
and is unlikely to have again posed with Mather. Second, Mather's name has been
spelled in various ways. Ben Maddow spelled it Margarethe in his biography of
Weston. R.
H. Cravens,
in the Master
of Photography series,
published by Aperture,
referred
to her as Margaret. Weston, her lover, inscribed her name on photographs and in
his daybooks as Margrethe, as does Amy Conger, the primary scholar on Weston's
life and work.