Earlier this month I visited San Francisco with my father for a couple of days. Among other things we visited the De Young museum. There I was struck by this photograph, and on inspection, recognized the name of the artist, Imogen Cunningham. Not because I have any especial knowledge of 20th century female American photographers, but because in googling my first name she pops up in the results because she named her first son Gryffyd. A younger son was called Padraic, and since this was my older brother’s name, this was apparently my mother’s inspiration. I’ll have to verify it. You’d think the history of our naming would be a minor bit of family lore, but it has not become so established. I pointed out the picture to my father and related the information about Imogen’s sons, but her name and story and likely influence on my mother were not familiar to him; he offered no alternative, however.
When I was gathering the links above, I came across a reference to Imogen having been born here in Portland. I don’t think I knew that before.
As a wise man once said, twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action.
Seriously, though, that’s supah cool. Also I kind of dig the name Imogen.