German-born Ruth Bernhard (1905-2006) moved to New York City in 1927 to pursue a career in photography following two years of study at the Academy of Arts, Berlin. In the mid-1930s she relocated to California to work with Edward Weston, a great influence on her practice. Eventually she settled in San Francisco, where she became a key figure among a group of photographers that included Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, and Wynn Bullock.

Bernhard’s photographs have been exhibited around the world and are in most major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

This is a beautiful print of one of Bernhard’s better known images, which was included in her seminal publication, The Eternal Body (Photography West, CA, 1986). It captures the spirit of her intent: “My aim is to transform the complexities of the figure into harmonies of simplified forms revealing the innate reality, the life force, the spirit, the inherent symbolism and the underlying remarkable structure – to isolate and give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity.”