[6] She began teaching at the University of California in 1958, while also giving lectures, classes and workshops all over the United States.

She worked as an assistant to Ralph Steiner in Delineator magazine, but he terminated her employment for indifferent performance.

[8] By the late-1920s, while living in Manhattan, Bernhard was heavily involved in the lesbian sub-culture of the artistic community, becoming friends with photographer Berenice Abbott and her lover, critic Elizabeth McCausland.

Her first realization that she was attracted to other women occurred on New Year's Eve 1928 when she met the painter Patti Light.

It was lightning in the darkness ... here before me was indisputable evidence of what I had thought possible—an intensely vital artist whose medium was photography.Bernhard was so inspired by Weston's work that, after meeting him in 1935, she moved to California (where he lived).

In 1939, Bernhard moved back to New York for eight years, during which time she met photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

Soon, finding Carmel a difficult place in which to earn a living, they moved to Hollywood where she fashioned a career as a commercial photographer.

In 1953, they moved to San Francisco[12] where she became a colleague of photographers such as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, and Wynn Bullock.

Van Peebles wrote the text and Bernhard took the unposed photographs for The Big Heart, a book about life on the cable cars.

In the early 1980s, Bernhard started to work with Carol Williams, owner of Photography West Gallery in Carmel, California.

Bernhard told Williams that she knew there would be a book of her photography after her death, but hoped one could be published during her lifetime.

The Eternal Body was reprinted by Chronicle Books and later as a deluxe limited Centennial Edition in celebration of Ruth Bernhard's 100th birthday in October 2005.