Edward Weston

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Edward Weston, photographed by Fred Archer

Edward Henry Weston (born March 24, 1886 in Highland Park , Illinois, † January 1, 1958 in Carmel-by-the-Sea ) was one of the most important American photographers of the 20th century and co-founder of the group f / 64 . Even in his lifetime he was considered a master and classic of artistic black and white photography . He created most of his works with an 8 × 10 inch plate camera .

Life

Early years

Edward Weston was born in Highland Park , Illinois in 1886 . His mother died when he was five years old. After his father remarried, Edward was raised by his sister Mary ("May"), nine years his senior. In 1902 he got his first camera for his 16th birthday, a Kodak Bull's-Eye No. 2, but soon switched to a large format camera . As he was successful with his photographs, pictures by the young Weston were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago as early as 1903 . Three years later he moved to live with his sister in California, where he settled down and built up an existence as a portrait photographer. In 1909 he married his first wife, Flora May Chandler, with whom he had four sons: Chandler (1910-1993), Brett (1911-1993), Neil (1914-1998) and Cole (1919-2003).

In 1911, Weston opened his first photography studio in Tropico, now Glendale , California, and wrote articles about his unconventional method of portraying for several magazines. In 1917 he became a member of the London Salon of Photography. The year 1922 was a phase of upheaval for Weston: He turned away from the usual pictorialism and became an advocate of realism and " straight photography ". In 1923 he moved to Mexico City, where he met the photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo . He sympathized with the Mexican Revolution and toured Mexico with Tina Modotti , who was both his photographic partner and his model and lover. Often the two were accompanied by one of the sons, which gave them a solid education in photography. Both Brett and Cole later made careers in this field.

photographer

In 1928 Weston moved back to Carmel-by-the-Sea , established a studio and trained his son Brett to be a photographer. Since 1927, Weston has mainly chosen nudes , but also objects such as mussels and vegetables as photographic subjects. After a few exhibitions of his work in New York, he initiated the founding of the group f / 64 in 1932 together with fellow photographers Ansel Adams , Willard Van Dyke , Imogen Cunningham and others.

Weston received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937 ; he was the first photographer to receive this award. Financial security and the fact that all sons were adults enabled him to divorce his first wife, Flora. The following year he married his assistant Charis Wilson. The couple divorced in 1945. During this time he published several books, some of them with Wilson.

An edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was illustrated with his photographs. In 1947 he also made some color photographs - rare in his work - together with Willard van Dyke. Weston contracted Parkinson's disease in 1948 and was soon unable to take photos. His last pictures were taken on the wild coast of Point Lobos . In 1952, on the occasion of his 50th "photography anniversary", a portfolio of his work was published; the prints were made by his son Brett. From 1955 to 1956 he appointed his sons Brett and Cole and Brett's wife Dody Warren to produce prints under his supervision from a total of around 800 negatives , which he considered to be his most important. In his will, he stated that no prints could be sold for less than $ 30.

Edward Weston died in his house in Carmel on New Year's Day 1958. His estate also contains his detailed diaries, which he kept regularly from the mid-1920s to 1934 and whose study still gives us a very intimate insight into his ideas and motivations.

plant

The term f / 64 , which gave the name to the group co-founded by Weston, refers to the practically smallest possible aperture of a large format camera (theoretically up to 256), which guarantees the greatest possible depth of field and gives a photo continuous sharpness from foreground to background. Using aperture 64 is therefore the consequence of the guidelines of “straight photography” and the logical answer to the pictorialists prevailing at the time , who orientated themselves towards painting and for whom sharpness was frowned upon. The change in style was reflected in a turning away from “conventional” art photography, coupled with a turn to the contrary trend, the “New Objectivity” .

According to the manifesto of their group “... the members of group f / 64 are convinced that photography as an art form must develop in a direction that is only determined by the conditions and limitations of the photographic medium, and that photography is always independent must abide by ideological conventions of an art and an aesthetic ; because these are remnants of an era and culture as they existed before photography was created. "

Edward Weston's preferred subjects were landscapes, nudes, natural and plant details of great depth of field, extraordinary richness of detail and fine shades of light and dark. The elaboration of his prints became increasingly abstract and artificial over time. Whether it is sand dunes, a dead piece of driftwood, a female nude, a nautilus shell or a bell pepper, Edward Weston tried to get to the bottom of the structure of things and was an obsessed perfectionist in it. As a result of his often weeks-long efforts, which you can read about in his diaries, he delivered prints with such extensive tonal value and structure that the viewer can almost feel the surface of the depicted object or body. With Edward Weston, the image of an ordinary bell pepper can appear just as erotic to the viewer as a nude photograph. Susan Sontag wrote in her essay on photography: “The peppers that Weston photographed in 1929 and 1930 are sensual in a way that his female nudes hardly are. Both the nudes and the peppers were photographed for the sake of the play of shapes [...] the seemingly neutral shape suddenly appears erotic; the emphasis on tactility is increased. "

Quote

"Dare to be irrational, keep yourself free from formulas, stay open to any fresh influence, stay flexible ..."

- Edward Weston

Movies

  • 1948: The Photographer - Film portrait of Willard Van Dyke about Weston. 26 minutes, black and white.
  • 1956: The Naked Eye - Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Louis Clyde Stoumen.
  • 2004: Peppers and Nudes - The Photographer Edward Weston - Documentary by Sabine Pollmeier and Joachim Haupt. World premiere: July 9, 2004 at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
  • 2007: Eloquent Nude - The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson - Documentary by Ian McCluskey.

literature

  • Thomas Buchsteiner: Edward, Cole and Kim Weston . Edition Stemmle, Kilchberg / Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-905514-41-9 .
  • Beth Gates Warren: Artful Lives: Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather, and the Bohemians of Los Angeles . Getty Publications, Los Angeles 2011, ISBN 978-1-60606-070-4
  • Nancy Newhall (Ed.): The Daybooks of Edward Weston . Aperture, New York 1990, ISBN 0-89381-450-4

Web links

Commons : Edward Weston  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Brett & Cole Weston, Conversations with the Masters
  2. ↑ Thomas Buchsteiner: Edward, Cole and Kim Weston , p. 7; see. Susan Sontag: On Photography , New York 1977
personal data
SURNAME Weston, Edward
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weston, Edward Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Highland Park, Illinois , USA
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1958
Place of death Carmel-by-the-Sea , California