Alma Lavenson, who first learned photography by watching a technician develop pictures at the local drugstore, is recognized as one of the leading West Coast photographers of the 1920s and 1930s. Along with her mentor Imogen Cunningham, she was a founding member of Ansel Adams’s influential Group f/64, a movement that embraced a straight, unmanipulated approach to photography. This dizzying view of a ship’s prow, with its dynamic lines and patterning of light and ropes, epitomizes Lavenson’s distinctively modern approach to form and subject matter.