While her husband Roi Partridge was teaching or at work in his studio, Cunningham stayed at home with their boys. There, with basic equipment, she made still life photographs and developed them in an improvised darkroom... She photographed both in the garden and indoors from cuttings in vases, during one quiet hour each afternoon when the boys were napping. She drew in closely to the leaves and flowers that were her subjects, illuminating them to describe their forms, and focusing on their varied surfaces. Magnolia Blossom is the most famous of these photographs. She cut a closed magnolia blossom from a tree in the backyard and brought it into the house, waiting for three days as the flower opened, until she sensed the right moment. With a close vantage point and focused detail, Cunningham revealed information about the flower unapparent to the casual observer. Having worked in Dresden, Cunningham was likely aware of Karl Blossfeldt's... enlarged studies of plant forms, published in Germany in 1909. Although she took a similar up-close perspective on these small, organic forms, her work is very different in composition: while Blossfeldt's images are diagrammatic and taxonomic, Cunningham's are architectonic. The light directed inside the flower draws the eye through its structure as if it were a building. This delicate lighting also suggests the softness and translucence of the petals. The lines and curves of the flower's form evoke human anatomy, and the delicacy of the petals hints at a subtle sexual metaphor.

from Acton, A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame: Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, 2019)