The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 15, 2025

Black-and-white photograph of two woman in a forest, glancing at each other with faint smiles. Twinka Thiebaud, a nude, young woman with light skin tone, faces us on our left, arms behind back and curling to look over her right shoulder at Imogen Cunningham, a woman in her nineties on our left. This woman wears a dress, has light skin tone with wispy white hair, a camera around her neck, and gazes at the first woman.

Imogen and Twinka

1974

Judy Dater

(American, 1941-)
America
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24.3 x 19.1 cm (9 9/16 x 7 1/2 in.); Paper: 24.3 x 19.1 cm (9 9/16 x 7 1/2 in.); Mounted: 45.7 x 35.4 cm (18 x 13 15/16 in.)
Gift of Tom E. Hinson and Diana S. Tittle 2017.228
© 1974 Judy Dater
Location: Not on view

Description

This iconic double portrait shows the famed nonagenarian photographer Imogen Cunningham coming upon the young model Twinka Thiebaud in the woods of Yosemite. Dater’s composition is inspired by, and reacts against, Thomas Hart Benton’s painting of Persephone of 1939. In her photograph, voyeurism gives way to an exchange of gazes between age and youth, human and possible nymph.
  • Dater, Judy, and James Enyeart. Judy Dater, Twenty Years. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, in association with the De Saisset Museum, University of Santa Clara, 1986.
    Cunningham, Imogen, and Judy Dater. Imogen Cunningham: A Portrait. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1979.
    Dater, Judy, Jack Welpott, and Henry Holmes Smith. Women and Other Visions. 1975.
  • {{cite web|title=Imogen and Twinka|url=false|author=Judy Dater|year=1974|access-date=15 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2017.228