Jane, Alice, and Imogen

In this photograph, we not only see Jane Foster (1912–1980) looking in the mirror and creating a painted self-portrait but also the photographer Imogen Cunningham mirrored in the background. A model, called Alice, is the subject of the painting in the left foreground, and it is she who completes this complex composition of portraits hiding within portraits.

The ostensible subject of this photograph is Foster, an artist from the San Francisco area who led a fascinating life of travel, government service, and espionage, most likely serving as a spy for the Soviet Union during and after World War II. She and her second husband, George Zlatovski (born c. 1910), were indicted for espionage by a federal grand jury in 1957, but they remained exiled in Paris and were never tried. Foster and Cunningham may have become acquainted through Cunningham’s husband, Roi George Partridge (1888–1984), who taught at Mills College, where Foster graduated in 1935.

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Annette and Robert Klayman