Alma Lavenson
Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait

© Alma Lavenson Archive. All Rights Reserved.

Self-Portrait
Self-Portrait
ArtistAmerican, 1897–1989
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Self-Portrait
Date1932
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 9 × 11 13/16 in. (22.9 × 30 cm)
Sheet: 11 × 13 15/16 in. (27.9 × 35.4 cm)
Credit LineGift of Mike and Mickey Marvins
Object number2015.635
Not on view

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Special Collections
Object Type
Description

In 1932, seven San Francisco-based photographers, including Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, banded together to form Group f/64, named for the smallest aperture on a large-format camera, the setting that yielded the greatest depth of field. Alma Lavenson was among those invited to participate in the group’s first exhibition that November—a show that heralded a new aesthetic of sharply focused, carefully composed images, often contact-printed on glossy gelatin-silver paper for maximum clarity.

Lavenson’s Self-Portrait, made earlier that year, was a daring departure from her own earlier Pictorialist style and from the traditions of self-portraiture. Presenting herself almost as a hybrid creature, half human and half machine, she declared the central importance of straightforward camera aesthetics in her new, modern style of photography, leaving the painterly past behind.
Provenance Research Ongoing Exhibition History“A Photographer’s Collection: Gifts from Michael and Michele Marvins,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, April 4–July 5, 2015.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
verso top left edge in pencil[upside down]: TR 644-92
lower right below image in pencil: Alma Lavenson

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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