CAPTURING THE VULNERABLE BODY: IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM’S PHOTOGRAPHIC SERIES "ROI ON THE DIPSEA TRAIL" (1918)

In 1918, Imogen Cunningham produced nine negatives of a nude male, her husband Roi Partridge, exploring the Dipsea Trail near Mill Valley, California. This thesis examines the often overlooked extant prints from the photographic series Roi on the Dipsea Trail in relation to the traditions of Pictorialism and Cunningham’s cultural environment in California during World War I and the Spanish Flu Pandemic. Although the photographs do not display explicit war symbolism, my research uses a historical and political lens to place the series within Cunningham’s oeuvre and in conversation with Modernist art as a response to the war. This work also considers the photographer’s treatment of the nude male body captured in vulnerable poses, viewed in contrast to the era’s favored strong man.