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Dimensions: measurements note 6 7/8 by 9 1/4 in. (17.5 by 23.5 cm.)
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Provenance: Acquired from the photographer by the present owner, 1973
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Literature: Naomi Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers (New York, 2000, 2nd ed.), pl. 155 (this print)Other prints of this image:Richard Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: Ideas without End (San Francisco, 1993), pl. 55Richard Lorenz, Imogen Cunningham: On the Body (Boston, 1998), pl. 35Richard Lorenz and Manfred Heiting, eds., Imogen Cunningham: 1883 - 1976 (Köln, 2001), p. 43Constance Sullivan, ed., Nude Photographs, 1850 - 1980 (New York, 1980), pl. 44Michael Köhler, ed., The Body Exposed: Views of the Body, 150 Years of the Nude in Photography (Zürich, 1995), p. 90Barbara Haskell, The American Century: Art & Culture, 1900 - 1950 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 206
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Notes: The subjects of this 1928 image are two sisters, Helen and Jackie Greaves, who were students at Mills College when the photograph was taken. The sitting took place in Edward Weston's Glendale studio, and a number of studies were made. In addition to the 'Figures' offered here, there was a photograph taken of Jackie Greaves alone (reproduced in Richard Lorenz's Imogen Cunningham: Frontiers, fig. 45), another of one of the sisters alone, of the two sisters in a different pose (Lorenz, Cunningham: On the Body, figs. 23 and 24), and a variety of images of the two sisters in seated and reclining positions (Taschen Editions, Imogen Cunningham, pls. 42, 44, and 45), among others. The most famous image to emerge from this session is Imogen Cunningham's signature nude study, 'Triangles.' All were made from 4-by-5-inch negatives. The present photograph shows Cunningham in what is perhaps the final phase of her transition from Pictorialism to modernism. The diffuse focus and narrative themes of her turn-of-the-century nudes have here given way to a rigorous composition of angles, shadows, and shapes. Early prints of any of the Greaves sisters series are scarce. Other than posthumous or later prints, no prints of 'Two Sisters' have appeared at auction in the past two decades. The print offered here, one of the few extant prints of the image, was exhibited in the New York Public Library's History of Women Photographers show, and traveled with that exhibition.
