A simple aesthetic principle guided the work of American photographer Imogen Cunningham. "To worship beauty for its own sake is narrow," Cunningham once wrote, "and one surely cannot derive from it that esthetic pleasure which comes from finding beauty in the commonest things." It is this search for beauty in the quotidian that informs her work: plant studies, portraiture, landscapes, and urban scenes. And to many accounts, Cunningham was successful in her endeavor. "Empathy rather than esthetic invention has been [Cunningham's] forte, guiding her eye and her lens to her most powerful images," wrote New York Times critic Hilton Kramer. "Cunningham's life in photography spanned seven decades, half of the relatively short history of the scientific art," noted Richard Lorenz in his Imogen Cunningham: Ideas without End: A Life in Photographs. Lorenz further commented, "Cunningham was admired around the world and, during her later years, revered...