Magnolia Blossom is one of series of photographs of flowers and plants Cunningham made in the 1920s that, in their own quiet way, were revolutionary in approach and execution. In Magnolia Blossom, the flower fills the entire frame. The pistils and stamens are in sharp focus and, through Cunningham’s masterful handling, the petals become a transfixing study of light, shadow, and translucence. It is an unsentimental and, for its time, entirely new approach to familiar and easily-romanticized subject matter.

This was an important image for Cunningham nearly from the time of its making. It was one of a selection of her images exhibited in the seminal Film und Foto exhibition in 1929, an exhibition which, decades later, continues to define photographic Modernism. It is a testament to the strength of this image that it has endured so resonantly within her oeuvre.

The print of Magnolia Blossom offered here comes originally from the collection of Maida Glover Gandy, a student at Mills College, where Cunningham’s husband, the artist Roi Partridge taught, and where the Cunningham family lived in the 1920s and ‘30s. It is printed on the warm-toned, matte-surface paper that Cunningham favored at that time. With its distinct surface and long tonal range, the paper is the perfect medium for this photograph, capturing the delicate balance of light and shadow that makes the image such an absorbing visual experience. Early in the 1930s, Cunningham would begin to print on photographic paper with a glossy surface, and later iterations of Magnolia Blossom, while beautifully rendered, present a very different experience of the image.