Imogen Cunningham: Flora

As seen in this stirring monograph, prepared for a photo exhibit in San Francisco, Cunningham glorifies the form, order and variety of nature's floral aspect with superbly controlled gradations of light, shadow and substance. This pioneering and eclectic California photographer, active from the century's beginning to the '70s, ""isolat[ed] her subject;... minimized the background, expanded scale with close-up scrutiny, and formalized presentation"" for her floral studies, writes curator-critic Lorenz in a broad-based and sometimes flowery text accompanying 161 photos. Though attuned to pure nature for most of her career, Cunningham was also a ""sophisticated aesthete"" who ""often delighted in upsetting common values""--a startling example being her double-image portrait of the artist Morris Graves, who is ""psychically incorporated"" into a forested landscape. Through extensive resort to contrasts and affinities vis-a-vis Cunningham's contemporaries--Weston, Adams, Stieglitz et al.--the author encompasses a seminal era in artistic photography, with Cunningham, about whom he has written three other books, as the star. (May)