Alma Lavenson

Alma Lavenson at Gitterman Gallery in New York, NY. "...Alma Lavenson was born in San Francisco in 1897 and after the 1906 earthquake she and her family relocated across the Bay to Oakland, where she lived for the rest of her life. Lavenson took up photography around 1918 and received a degree in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1919. Her earliest photographs are emblematic of the pictorialist style of the time. In 1930 a family friend presented Lavenson with letters of introduction to Imogen Cunningham, who became a life-long friend and her greatest influence, and to Edward Weston, who encouraged her to switch from a soft-focus to a sharp focus lens."