Two Parents, One Son. A Century of Vision.

In a San Francisco darkroom in the 1920s, five-year-old Rondal stood on a wooden box to reach the darkroom sink, learning to rock developing trays as he watched the images appear like magic on the silver gelatin paper. His mother, Imogen Cunningham, taught him how light and chemistry could capture a moment forever. Rondal Partridge would go on to photograph for ninety years. Imogen Cunningham would work for eighty years. His father, Roi Partridge, would continue to work as an etcher, venturing into the West’s landscapes carrying copper plates and etching tools, to work en plein air, directly from nature, for seven decades. For the first time, their work comes together.

Convergence and Divergence: The FamilyAesthetic, runs June 11 – September 14, 2026, at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art located at 540 Spring Street, Friday Harbor, Washington. Featuring over 100 photographs and prints from the remarkably long careers of three artists, the work is curated from their personal archives. This groundbreaking exhibition tells an intimate story: how artistic vision travels across generations, how family members see the same world with different eyes and how three artists kept their creative spark alive while making a living as artists.

A Family of Artists

Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) pioneered American modernist photography across seven decades. A founding member of Group f/64 with Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, she created iconic botanical studies-her 1925 Magnolia Blossom remains one of photography’s most celebrated images. She photographed Frida Kahlo, Martha Graham, Ruth Asawa and countless others, constantly reinventing her vision until weeks before her death at the age of ninety-three.

Roi Partridge (1888-1984) trained as an etcher in Munich and Paris before marrying Imogen in 1915. While photography began generating interest in the art world, he devoted himself to etching. His technically masterful prints earned him election to the
National Academy of Design. Teaching art at Mills College for twenty-six years, he quietly and consistently created a body of work that preserved landscapes – often before they vanished beneath development.

Rondal Partridge (1917-2015) literally grew up in the darkroom. At sixteen, he apprenticed with Imogen’s good friend, Dorothea Lange. Driving Dorothea through Depression-era California for one dollar a day, he absorbed Dorothea’s perspective on the
critical importance of documenting human dignity and rights. He went on to work as an apprentice to Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park, gaining masterful darkroom skills and joining Ansel in his passion for preserving the wilderness. With this youthful and quickly gained combination of technical photographic savvy, environmental awareness and passion for humanity, Rondal combined all his interests in documenting the world for eighty more years, photographing environmental destruction, parking lots in paradise, the cost of progress, and revealing human portraits.

A Retrospective Spanning Over 100 Years
This exhibition draws on three unusually long careers, nearly 110 years of combined work.The selection includes celebrated masterworks alongside intimate studies rarely seen outside family collections, revealing not just what these artists achieved but how they worked, experimented, and saw the world differently, even as they shared many similar artistic sensibilities and subjects.

A Conversation Across Time
Walk through the exhibition and you’ll encounter a conversation across time and place from three different artists. Thematic collections reveal what these three artists shared: devotion to nature’s beauty, mastery of light and form, and the pursuit of ongoing experimentation. Imogen’s 1920s magnolia blossoms find echoes in Rondal’s late botanical studies; Roi’s etched trees share compositional DNA with those of his wife and his son’s photographs.Looking closely, you’ll see Imogen transformed herself repeatedly—from a soft-focus,pictorialist photographer to a modernist street documentarian— always chasing new ways of seeing, while also returning to familiar visual territory to pursue still photography and portraiture. Roi stood firm with traditional etching throughout his career, working patiently with copper plates and etching presses. Rondal broke from both parents to document suburban sprawl, polluted beaches, and human pressures on the wilderness.Same family, same West Coast, different perspectives.

Inside the Exhibition

Botanical Beauty: Different Approaches. Imogen found profound intimacy in magnolias and lilies, her lens moving so close that petals almost become personal abstract landscapes. Rondal photographed both fresh botanicals and decaying elements –
preserved forms inviting contemplation of beauty and impermanence. Their botanical works, displayed side by side, reveal two artists from one family finding different meanings in similar subjects.

Portraits That Reveal Character. All three artists created powerful portraits. Imogen captured the powerful presence from the striking portrait of Frida Kahlo to Martha Graham’s vivid intensity. In the rare moments that Roi etched portraits, we see an
essential view that creates the sitter’s essence with a few strokes of his etching tools. Together, they reveal human complexity, compassion, and personality. Roi’s Mastery: Etching En Plein Air. Roi Partridge carried his heavy copper plates and
etching tools into the landscape, working directly from nature. His technically brilliant prints required patience and profound skill—each line carefully incised, each tone meticulously controlled. The exhibition showcases this remarkable practice: making
permanent art outdoors with tools that demanded absolute precision.

Self-Documentation. Imogen photographed herself across many decades with unflinching honesty. Roi etched himself at work. Rondal’s self-portraits range from youthful experiments to late reflections on aging. These self-portraits reflect the same wry observation that these artists brought to their pursuit of capturing everything from street photography to botanicals to portraits.

Experimental Work. A dedicated section explores how all three artists pushed their mediums. Imogen’s double exposures and photomontages. Roi’s explorations of distorted perspective gave his etchings his own creative interpretation. Rondal’s darkroom
manipulations and late investigations of alternative processes, silkscreen techniques and placing photographs in a 3D environment. These works reveal artists exploring their art forms and whose art practices continuously evolved.

Landscape and Change. The exhibition shares Roi’s pastoral etchings from the 1910s-1950s alongside Rondal’s photographs of the same regions decades later, transformed by development. The juxtaposition invites viewers to look closer and visualize the relationship between progress and preservation.

Two Films Explore the Lives of the Filmmaker’s Family. Documentary films by Lopez Island resident Meg Partridge (daughter of Rondal Partridge) on Imogen Cunningham and Rondal Partridge will run in the Museum concurrently during the exhibition.

Why this Exhibition is Historic
This is the first comprehensive exhibition examining these three artists together. It offers unprecedented access to personal archives, fresh perspectives on familiar figures, and a new understanding of how artistic vision is transmitted-and transformed-across generations. It’s family history, photographic history, and environmental history woven together.

Exhibition Highlights
• Imogen Cunningham’s Magnolia Blossom and portrait of Frida Kahlo
• Roi Partridge’s en plein air landscape etchings
• Rondal Partridge’s street photography, environmental views and botanical studies
• How differing approaches to similar subjects inspired three artists
• How experimental work drove technical and artistic innovations
• Documentary films by Meg Partridge

National Tour 

Following its Friday Harbor premiere, the exhibition is available to tour nationally. Museums interested in hosting should contact the Imogen Cunningham Trust, email: meg@imogencunningham.com.