Alma Lavenson

Who was Alma Lavenson?

Alma Ruth Lavenson was a leading American photographer of the first half of the 20th century. She worked with and was a close friend of Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and other photographic masters of the period.

The daughter of a dry-goods businessman, Lavenson apparently decided to become a photographer on her own after enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1915. Her first photos were snapshots of family and friends taken with a small Kodak camera. She learned to develop and print her negatives by watching a technician at an Oakland drugstore in the early 1920s. Her first published photograph, an image of Zion Canyon entitled "The Light Beyond," appeared on the cover of Photo-Era magazine in December 1927. In her early work she concentrated the geometric forms of structures and their placement in the landscape. She frequently exhibited in photographic salons and became a member of the influential Pictorial Photographers of America.

In 1930 she was introduced to Adams, Cunningham and Weston by art collector Albert Bender.