Consuelo Kanaga
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Object Details
- Date
- c. 1931
- Artist
- Alma Lavenson, 1897 - 1989
- Sitter
- Consuelo Delesseps Kanaga, 25 May 1894 - 28 Feb 1978
- Exhibition Label
- Beginning in 1915 Consuelo Kanaga served as a reporter and then as a staff photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle. While in San Francisco, she befriended members of the city’s artistic community, including photographers Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, and Edward Weston, and later exhibited her work alongside theirs as an unofficial member of the group f/64. In 1922 she moved to New York City, where she worked for the New York American. There, she also met photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whose journal Camera Work had been crucial in raising awareness of photography as a fine art. Stieglitz encouraged Kanaga to mine the medium’s aesthetic possibilities in her photojournalism. In her eclectic oeuvre, she sensitively documented social inequities, most notably the plight of African Americans and migrant workers; she also photographed still lifes of flowers and household objects.
- Kanaga was establishing herself as a portraitist in the Bay Area in the early 1930s when Alma Levenson photographed her.
- Consuelo Kanaga trabajó desde 1915 como reportera y luego fotógrafa de staff para el San Francisco Chronicle. En San Francisco entabló amistad con figuras de la comunidad artística como los fotógrafos Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange y Edward Weston, junto a quienes expuso luego su propia obra, como integrante extraoficial del grupo f/64. En 1922 se trasladó a la ciudad de New York, donde trabajó para el New York American. Allí conoció al fotógrafo Alfred Stieglitz, cuyo diario Camera Work fue crucial para fomentar la sensibilización hacia la fotografía como arte. Stieglitz estimuló a Kanaga para que explotara las posibilidades estéticas de dicho medio en sus trabajos de fotoperiodismo. A lo largo de su ecléctica producción, Kanaga documentó con empatía la desigualdad social, sobre todo la triste situación de los trabajadores afroamericanos y migrantes; también fotografió bodegones de flores y objetos domésticos.
- Kanaga iba camino a establecerse como retratista en el área de la Bahía de San Francisco a principios de la década de 1930, cuando Alma Lavenson la fotografió.
- Topic
- Interior
- Consuelo Delesseps Kanaga: Female
- Consuelo Delesseps Kanaga: Visual Arts\Artist\Photographer
- Portrait
- See more items in
- National Portrait Gallery Collection
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Credit Line
- National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
- Data Source
- National Portrait Gallery
- Object number
- NPG.2016.12
- Type
- Photograph
- Restrictions & Rights
- Usage conditions apply
- Copyright
- © Alma Lavenson Archive. All Rights Reserved
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image/Sheet: 16.6 × 12.7cm (6 9/16 × 5")
- Mount: 43.3 × 35.5 cm (17 1/16 × 14")
- Metadata Usage
- Usage conditions apply
- Record ID
- npg_NPG.2016.12