Explore the Critical reaction of this artwork.
The photo was immediately the subject of feminist critical analysis. In 1974, critic Lucy Dougan wrote that the photo "parodies depictions of male voyeurism in the history of Western art, as it playfully amends all those mythical violations of sacred places. It juxtaposes the city against the pastorale: Cunningham's technological baggage of city life/city seeing hangs around her neck in the form of a large camera, but here it is obsolete and new ways of seeing and old narratives come together." She went on to compare the photo to a poem by Kathleen Raine that talks about an old woman's memory of her young breasts, but concludes that the photo has a "much lighter tone of heart" than the poem.In 1997, critic Sarah Boxer described the photo as "Imogen Cunningham sneaking around the trunk of a giant tree in Yosemite National Park and coming upon Twinka, a nude model who has one leg propped on a root and is looking around coyly" and called it "an amusing play" on the goddess Diana. In 1999, critic Margarett Loke said that the photo "remains a delightful send-up of a photographer with a nude subject". In 2011, critic Donna Stein wrote that "Dater reverses the traditional erotic relationship of a leering old man eyeing a voluptuous nude to show two women - youth and old age - confronting each other." Stein reports that the photo "pays homage to the Persephone myth as portrayed in a painting by Thomas Hart Benton".
Persephone Diana Imogen Cunningham Kathleen Raine Yosemite National Park voyeurism