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Edward Weston

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File:Edward Weston Tina Modotti 1923.jpg
Tina Modotti's portrait of Edward Weston in 1923

Edward Weston (March 24 1886 - January 1 1958) was an American photographer, and co-founder of Group f/64. Most of his work was done using an 8 by 10 inch view camera.

Life and work

Edward Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois on March 24, 1886. In 1902, he received his first camera for his 16th birthday, a Kodak Bull's-Eye #2, and began taking photographs in Chicago parks and at his aunt's farm. Weston met with quick success and the Chicago Art Institute exhibited his photographs a year later, in 1903.

In 1906, Weston moved to California, where he decided to stay and pursue a career in photography. He married Flora May Chandler in 1909, and together they had four sons: Chandler (1910), Brett (1911), Neil (1914) and Cole (1919). In 1911, Weston opened his first photographic studio in Tropico, California (now Glendale) and wrote articles about his unconventional methods of portraiture for several high-circulation magazines.

File:Tina Modotti Edward Weston 1923.jpg
Weston's 1923 portrait of Tina Modotti

1922 marked a period of transition for Weston. Renouncing pictorialism in favor of straight photography, he began regular visits to Mexico with his professional and romantic partner, Tina Modotti, whose relationship with Weston caused much gossip in the media. They were often accompanied by one of Weston's sons, who received a sound instruction in photography. Brett and Cole later embarked on their own, successful careers in this field; likewise his grandson Kim, and his great-granddaughter Christine Weston (born 1958).

After 1927, Weston worked mainly with nudes, still life - his shells and vegetable studies were especially important - and landscape subjects. After a few exhibitions of his works in New York, he co-founded Group f/64 in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke and others. The term f/64 referred to the smallest aperture setting on a large format camera, which secured maximum depth of field, rendering a photograph evenly sharp from foreground to background. This corresponded to the philosophy of straight photography that the group espoused in response to the pictorialist methods that were still in fashion at the time.

File:Mather and Weston Imogen Cunningham 1922.jpg
Imogen Cunningham's 1922 portrait of Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston

According to the group's manifesto, "the members of Group f/64 believe that photography, as an art form, must develop along lines defined by the actualities and limitations of the photographic medium, and must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of a period and culture antedating the growth of the medium itself."

In 1937 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation awarded Weston a fellowship, the first given to a photographer. He married his assistant, Charis Wilson, the following year (they had lived together since 1934, and divorced in 1946). During this time he received exclusive commissions and published several books, some with Wilson, including an edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass illustrated with his photographs. He also produced some of his few color photographs with Willard Van Dyke in 1947. Weston also collaborated on several volumes of his photographs with photography critic Nancy Newhall, beginning in 1946.

The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson houses a full archive of Edward Weston's work.

Illness

Stricken with Parkinson's Disease, Weston made his last photographs at Point Lobos State Reserve in 1948. 1952 saw the publication of a 50th-anniversary portfolio of his work, printed by his son Brett. Brett and Cole Weston, as well as Brett's wife Dody Warren, were appointed to print 800 of what he considered his most important negatives under his supervision in the years 1955 - 1956.

Edward Weston died in his house on Wildcat Hill in Carmel, California on January 1 1958, aged 71.

His comprehensive legacy includes the detailed and articulate Daybooks he kept regularly from the mid-1920s to 1934, which allow a very intimate glimpse into his personal life, his views on photography, and his working methods. Weston is generally recognized as one of the greatest photographic artists of the 20th century.

Selected publications

  • Edward Weston: The Last Years in Carmel
  • Edward and Brett Weston: Dune
  • The Daybooks of Edward Weston
  • Edward Weston: Nudes
  • Portraits by Edward Weston
  • Tina Modotti & Edward Weston: The Mexico Years
  • Edward Weston: His Life
  • Edward, Cole, Kim Weston: Three Generations of American Photography
  • Edward Weston: 1886-1958
  • Edward Weston (Masters of Photography Series)
  • Laughing Eyes (a collection of letters between Edward and Cole Weston)
  • Through Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston by Charis Wilson and Wendy Madar (1998) ISBN 0-86547-521-0