1897
Geboren in San Francisco, CA (US)

1989
Gestorben in Piedmont, CA (US)

The members of Group f/64-including Cunningham, Weston, and Ansel Adams-invited Lavenson to participate in their groundbreaking 1932 exhibition at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. The purist style of the photographs in the show had a lasting impact on American photography.

In 1933 Lavenson began a major series of documentary photographs of the Mother Lode region of California, focusing on the remnants of towns built during the Gold Rush. The project occupied much of her energy for two decades.

Major museums exhibited her work in group and solo shows, but her images have entered public and private collections more slowly than those of her peers. In part this was because she considered photography an avocation, retaining the traditional values of her parents who discouraged her from pursuing a career. Lavenson has gradually gained the reputation she so richly deserves as a pioneering Modernist photographer.