Exhibition: ‘Edward Weston. La matèria de les formes’ at Centro de Fotografía KBr Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona

Exhibition dates: 12th June – 31st August, 2025

Curator: Sérgio Mah

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Surf, Bodega
1937
19 x 24cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

Three week’s to the day since my hip replacement operation and I’m still in pain. I know, slowly slowly but it’s very frustrating…

Thus, I just have two words for you about this exhibition –

GREAT WESTERN!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Fundación MAPFRE for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, It is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,
Perhaps it is every where on water and land.”

Walt Whitman. Part of Song of Myself from Leaves of Grass. 1855

I never try to limit myself by theories, I do not question right or wrong approach when I am interested or amazed – impelled to work. I do not fear logic, I dare to be irrational, or really never consider whether I am or not. This keeps me fluid, open to fresh impulse, free from formulae; and precisely because I have no formulae – the public who know my work is often surprised, the critics, who all, or most of them, have their pet formulae are disturbed. And my friends distressed.

I would say to any artist – don’t be repressed in your work – dare to experiment – Consider any urge – if in a new direction all the better – as a gift from the Gods not to be lightly denied by convention or a priori concept. Our time is becoming more and more bound by logic, absolute rationalism; this is a straitjacket I – it is the boredom and narrowness which rises directly from mediocre mass thinking.

The great scientist dares to differ from accepted ‘facts’ -think irrationally – let the artist do likewise.

Edward Weston 28 January, 1932 from The Daybooks of Edward Weston. Vol. ll Horizon Press, New York 1966

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Guadalupe Marín de Rivera
1924
20.8 x 17.9cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Gift of Ansel and Virginia Adams

Strongly linked to the landscape and to North American cultural history, Edward Weston’s work, in its extreme simplicity and originality, allows us to appreciate a unique perspective on the process of consolidation of photography as an artistic medium and its relevant role in the context of modernity in the visual arts. The exhibition Edward Weston. La matèria de les formes (Edward Weston. The Matter of Forms) is conceived as an anthology that covers the different phases of the artist’s photographic production.

A pioneer in the use of a modern photographic style, his use of the large-format camera gives rise to richly detailed black and white images of extraordinary clarity. His technical expertise and his affection for nature and form led to the development of a body of work in which iconic images of still lifes, nudes, landscapes and portraits stand out. His images are essential for understanding the new aesthetic and new American lifestyle that emerged in the United States between the wars.

The exhibition, curated by Sergio Mah, consists of around two hundred photographs grouped into seven sections. The exhibition tour is completed with numerous documentary material and is conceived from a European perspective on the legacy of modern American photography. An aesthetic and conceptual counterpoint to the photographic modernism in Europe that emerged with the first avant-garde of the 20th century.

The emancipation of photography

Edward Weston was one of the pioneers, along with Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, in defending the emancipation of photography from other artistic disciplines. In this sense, his work contributed decisively to demonstrating, in this early period of photography, the aesthetic and perceptual dimension of the medium, the capacity to express aesthetic qualities in the same way as painting or sculpture.

Figuration and abstraction

The technical mastery of the photographic medium leads Weston to a formalism in which framing becomes one of the most relevant elements of his work. Weston eliminates any anecdotal aspect and focuses on the motif that interests him, and does so with such realism and exaltation of the two-dimensional nature of photography, which often results in an abstract image. In this way, the artist shows that figuration and abstraction do not exempt one from the other, but are perfectly compatible.

Exhibition organised with the support of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE website translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Two Shells
1927, print about 1933
24.1 x 18.4cm
Gelatin silver print
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Pepper No. 30
1930
22.8 x 17.7cm
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy by Trockmorton Fine Art

Highlights

Fundación MAPFRE presents the exhibition Edward Weston. The Matter of Forms, dedicated to the five decades of the career of this North American artist, one of the most important figures in modern photography. In addition, through the work of the artist himself, the exhibition aims to offer a pedagogical reflection on the history of the medium and its relevance as an aesthetic and perceptive discipline, apart from the more traditional plastic arts; specifically, painting.

Key points

The emancipation of photography

Edward Weston was one of the pioneers, along with Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, in defending the emancipation of photography from other artistic disciplines. In this sense, his work is essential to understanding the aesthetic and perceptive capacity of the medium in its beginnings. This capacity allows photography to express aesthetic qualities such as beauty, pain or ugliness at the same level as painting or sculpture.

Figuration and abstraction

The technical mastery of the photographic medium leads Weston to a formalism where framing becomes one of the most relevant elements of his work. In this sense, he eliminates any anecdotal aspect and focuses on the motif that interests him, and he does so with such realism and with such exaltation of the two-dimensional character of photography that he ends up obtaining an abstract image as a result. In this way, the artist shows that figuration and abstraction do not exclude each other, but are perfectly compatible.

Pepper No. 30

Edward Weston took this photograph, one of the most representative of his entire career, at the beginning of August 1930. It was not the first time he had photographed a vegetable, nor a pepper. The artist himself spoke about this image: “It is a fully satisfactory classic: a pepper, but more than a pepper. It is abstract, in the sense that it exists completely outside the subject. It has no psychological attributes, it does not awaken human emotions: this new pepper takes us beyond the world we know in the conscious mind.” In the light of this photograph and the artist’s words, the innovative character of his work can be distinguished, which transcended not only modern American photography, but also European photography.

The exhibition

Weston’s work, strongly linked to the landscape and to North American cultural history, in its extreme simplicity and originality, reveals a unique perspective on the process of consolidation of photography as an artistic medium and its relevant role in the context of modernity in the visual arts. The exhibition Edward Weston. The Matter of Forms is conceived as an anthology that covers the different phases of the artist’s photographic production. From his initial interest in Pictorialist approaches to his consolidation as one of the central figures in the affirmation of the poetic and speculative value of direct photography. A pioneer in the use of a modern photographic style, his work is characterised by the use of a large-format camera, which allows him to offer richly detailed black and white images of extraordinary clarity. His mastery of technique, together with his love of nature and form, led him to develop a photographic production in which iconic images of still lifes, nudes, landscapes and portraits stand out. As a co-founder of the photography collective Group f/64, his images are key to understanding the new North American aesthetic and lifestyle that emerged in the United States between the wars.

The exhibition, grouped into seven sections and curated by Sérgio Mah, consists of around 200 photographs and a large amount of documentary material. The exhibition is conceived as a European look at the legacy of modern North American photography. An aesthetic and conceptual counterpoint to the modern photography that emerged in Europe with the first avant-garde of the 20th century.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Prologue to a Sad Spring
1920
23.8 x 18.7cm
Platinum print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Johan Hagemeyer Collection/Purchase

1 /

Edward Weston began photography very early, thanks to a Kodak Bulls-Eye No. 2 camera that his father gave him when he was just sixteen. Although he was practically self-taught, in 1911 he opened his first photographic establishment in a suburb of Los Angeles. His early works reveal the influence of the Pictorialist atmosphere of the time: impressionistic views and pastoral subjects with soft or slightly blurred focus, scenography and expressive poses.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Janitzio, Mexico
1926
20.4 x 25.2cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive/Gift of the Heirs of Edward Weston

2 /

Weston’s dissatisfaction with this artistic approach to photography, which sought to assimilate itself to painting, coincided with the appearance of other photographers with similar ideas, such as Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, whom he met in New York in 1922. In 1923 he set sail for Mexico accompanied by one of his sons and the photographer Tina Modotti. There he found a true renaissance of the arts and culture, and he came into contact with artists such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Rafael Sala. He expanded his visual horizon and tackled new themes, photographing objects, figures and motifs far from their original context, turning them into suggestive and extraordinary elements. It was then that he realised that true photographic art is intuitive and immediate, that the elimination of everything that is accessory constitutes the essence of his creative talent.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Excusado, Mexico
October 1925
24.1 x 19.1cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

3 /

From 1927, influenced by the humanism of Walt Whitman and his work Leaves of Grass, he felt attracted, in the words of Sérgio Mah, by “the extraordinariness of banality”. Fruits, shells and vegetables became the protagonists of his works, and he made one of his most famous photographs: a toilet, an unusual object as an artistic subject, with the title Excused. In these images, Weston accentuated the two-dimensionality of the motifs, since it was one of the characteristics of photography that interested him. He looked for details as a way of fragmenting, isolating and approximating the photographed object, eliminating the sense of depth, a technique particularly notable in still lifes with dark backgrounds, as is the case with his photographs of peppers.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Floating Nude
1939
19.3 x 24.2cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

4 /

From 1926, after leaving Mexico, Weston photographed several sets of nudes. In these nudes, the photographer’s gaze varies depending on the model. In some cases, the frame is wide and even shows the face, while in others the gaze is more segmented and focuses on parts of the body as a way of cutting out and accentuating the shapes within the frame. It must be recognized that eroticism is a quality present in some of these photographs. However, it is incorrect to conclude that this type of gaze prevails in most of the nudes he photographed. Above all, Weston observes the body as a formal reality. The beauty and sensuality that these bodies suggest is reflected in the play of lines, shadows and contours they offer.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Clouds, Death Valley
1939
20.4 x 25.2cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

5 /

From the late 1920s and into the following decades, landscape became a central element in Weston’s work. The artist photographed in the desert near Palm Springs, California, as well as in New Mexico, Arizona, and other Californian areas near his home in Carmel. In these works, the horizon and the depth of the background become a structural part of his works: the panoramic shots highlight the sublime character of the landscape. It was also during this period that Weston began to be interested in meteorological phenomena such as rain, the configuration of clouds, and the aridity of the territory.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Crescent Beach, North Coast
1939
24.3 x 19.2cm
Silver print mounted on board
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

6 /

Over the years, Weston’s work increasingly acquired a “dense and melancholic” patina, an aspect that is accentuated by the tones that the images acquire. This characteristic is particularly evident in the photographs he took in 1941 to illustrate Leaves of Grass, a project for which he traveled throughout much of the United States for nearly two years. The images he captured in cemeteries in Louisiana and Georgia stand out, as well as those of abandoned, destroyed and burned buildings where the interest in formal aspects predominates and in which a critical and disillusioned commentary on reality and American society can already be seen.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Drift Stump, Crescent Beach
1937
20.3 x 25.2cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

7 /

In the vicinity of Point Lobos, California, was the log cabin built by his son Neil on Wildcat Hill, where Weston moved in 1938. In this area of California, the artist found the wild nature that he had sought in distant places. His images from this period denote less compositional and formal rigidity and show the cycles of nature in the territory, the wild beauty, the trees, stones and rocky landscapes that seem to arise and remain in a time that is stopped. These images express a certain melancholy and solitude, while allowing the viewer to rediscover nature in all its splendour.

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Dunes, Death Valley
1938
20.4 x 25.1cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Edward Weston Archive

Catalogue

The catalogue accompanying this exhibition reproduces all the photographs on display. In addition, it includes essays by Sérgio Mah, its curator, by Rebecca Senf, who discusses the artist’s relationship with Mexico, and by Jason Weems, who focuses on Weston’s landscapes and vegetable photographs. It also includes a series of reflections by the artist himself on photography taken from his diaries.

The publication of the catalogue, published in Spanish and Catalan by Fundación MAPFRE, also has a co-edition in Italian published by Dario Cimorelli Editore.

Text from Fundación MAPFRE translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Nude
1936
23.4 x 19.1cm
Gelatin silver print
Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Gift of the Estate of A.Richard Diebold, Jr.

Author of a vast and diverse body of work spanning five and a half decades, Edward Weston (1886-1958) is one of the great figures in the history of modern photography, partly because his work allows us to reflect on the distinctive qualities of photography as a technical, aesthetic and perceptual category.

His first creative experiments reveal a momentary adherence to the pictorialist tendencies of the time, but he would later stand out as one of the protagonists of a new generation of American photographers who sought to refocus the artistic axis of photography based on its exceptional capacity to represent the most diverse subjects in the world with rigor, clarity and sobriety.

With their extreme simplicity and originality, the exceptional quality of Weston’s images also lies in the way in which he was able to rethink and articulate the extraordinary realistic and objective capacity of photography with its aesthetic, poetic and phenomenological potential, contributing to expanding the horizon of the subjective experience of the image. In this way, Weston enunciated the unique role of photography in the panorama of the visual arts of his time.

Weston was an immensely prolific photographer and his work brings together a whole series of photographic themes, types and genres: portraits, nudes, still lifes, natural and urban landscapes, object photography, architecture… This anthological exhibition aims to cover the entirety of Weston’s photographic career, which began at the beginning of the 20th century and was uninterrupted until the end of the 1940s. The selection of works aims to go well beyond the period in which Weston took most of the images that gave him wide critical and institutional recognition. The truth is that a more complete and heterogeneous approach to his work allows us to summon other layers of aesthetic appreciation, broadening the understanding of the depth and articulations that Weston developed in the various fields he explored. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to point out the aspects and affinities (in the gaze, in the construction of the image or in its peculiar relationship with certain themes) present throughout his career, emphasizing the coherence of his imagery, as well as the nuances and moments of transition that occurred in it.

Sérgio Mah
Curator

Text from Fundación MAPFRE translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Dunes, Oceano
1936
24.1 x 18.9cm
Silver print mounted on board
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

From an early age, Edward Weston showed an interest in developing a creative side of photography apart from his commercial work. His early experiments show the influence of painting and reveal his attention and attachment to the pictorialist atmosphere of the time. These photographs include impressionistic views, pastoral subjects with soft or slightly blurred focus, numerous staged portraits that explore expressive poses and combinations with shadows and graphic elements of the environment.

The two periods he spent in Mexico, between 1923 and 1924 and then between 1925 and 1926, were decisive in Edward Weston’s creative career. There he began to explore new themes and genres and his visual horizon expanded significantly. He covered a wide variety of subjects, types of places, figures and things, parts of things, appropriate objects, motifs taken from their original context and repositioned in another interpretative framework. At the same time, his visual style completely sheds any reminiscence of the Pictorialist phase. A photography of great technical, formal and compositional rigour was consolidated. Weston realised that he had the capacity to transform trivial things into suggestive and extraordinary. He was clear that the art of photography lies fundamentally in the moment of making the image, in the way in which the photographer contemplates the subject and makes decisions according to the variables inherent in the photographic device. For him, the process is instinctive. This way of seeing – intuitive, intense and immediate – which seeks to isolate the subject, eliminating the accessory, the unnecessary, anything that could divert or attenuate the intensity of the photographic vision, constitutes the essence of Weston’s creative talent.

From 1927, Weston began a series of still life photographs. In these images he fully reveals the principles and characteristics of his work: the desire to represent the timeless essence of a natural object and, correlatively, to emphasise the duplicative and perceptive capacities of the photographic medium.

The compositions are carefully conceived. In the space of the image, there is a calculated conformity between the dimension of the forms and the format of the image. Here it is important to reiterate the focus on detail as a defining aspect of Weston’s imagery, evident in these still lifes and also in other aspects of his work. Weston understands the vision of detail as a way of fragmenting, isolating and bringing our gaze closer to certain things, accentuating the two-dimensional character of the image, its closed and opaque nature, without depth or horizon, evident above all in still lifes with dark backgrounds, such as photographs of peppers, but also in the various images of plants, trees, rocks and stones that he has been making since the early 1930s.

Weston left Mexico in 1926. In the following years, he made several series of nudes. This is not a new subject. He had already made some important ones before, including one of Anita Brenner’s back and another of her son Neil, whose torso is cut out in an image that evokes ancient Greek statues. In the nudes, the photographer’s gaze varies depending on the model. In some cases, the framing is wide and even shows the face, while in others the gaze is more segmented and focuses on parts of the body as a way of cutting out and accentuating the shapes within the frame. We can recognise that eroticism is a quality present in some of these photographs. It is incorrect, however, to conclude that this gaze prevails in most of his nudes. Weston observes the body mainly as a formal reality. The beauty and sensuality that these bodies suggest are based above all on the play of lines, shadows and contours that they provide.

From the late 1920s, and with greater intensity in the following decades, the landscape genre occupies a central place in Weston’s photographic production. In 1927, the artist takes photos in the Californian desert near Palm Springs. In the following years, he travels through New Mexico, Arizona and other areas of California, such as Oceano, Death Valley, Yosemite, the Mojave Desert and Point Lobos, near his home in Carmel. In these various places, he captures wide views of inhospitable territories in which there are no signs of human presence or intervention. The horizon line and the breadth of the territory become structuring motifs in his work. The impetus for these images is a feeling of admiration for the epic and immeasurable nature of these natural landscapes. Beyond his choice of panoramic shots, the images reveal other aspects and elements of nature, such as meteorological phenomena, rain, cloud formations and variations in sunlight, often in conjunction with their visual effect on the arid land or the vegetation and unique morphology of these territories. It is a vision sensitive to the transformative nature of the landscape, subject to environmental and geological changes.

Gradually, and with greater intensity from the 1940s onwards, Edward Weston’s imagery became denser and more melancholic, not only in terms of the selection of subjects, but also in the tonalities of the images. This tendency is particularly evident in the photographs he takes for an edition of Leaves of Grass, the masterpiece of the poet Walt Whitman. He travels throughout the United States for two years. He revisits many of the recurring themes in his work, but the large number of images he takes of cemeteries in Louisiana and Georgia stand out. These are photographs in which his interest in formal aspects, texture and light predominates. All the subjects are seen as an integral part of a geography that is at once physical, social and mental. On the other hand, there are a lot of images of abandoned, destroyed and burnt buildings, of rubbish and things destined to disappear. We can identify that the themes of finitude and death contribute to an imagery increasingly characterised by loneliness, melancholy, and decadence. For the first time in his work, the images suggest a disillusioned and critical commentary on American reality, on the relationship between nature and culture, continuity and change, alienation and social tension.

In 1938, Weston moved with Charis Wilson to the wooden house built by his son Neil on Wildcat Hill, near Point Lobos, California. The artist spent long periods taking photos in this coastal region. He wandered through areas that he knew well. The images show a nature permeated with cycles, rhythms and forces, a macrocosm where Weston found the material to continue his work. At Point Lobos, Weston encountered a wild, dazzling and ineffable beauty that he had always sought in distant places. In the trees, forests, stones and rocky landscapes, the photographer found a vital energy that led perception towards a diffuse time, contrary to the linearity of history, alien to modernity. Nature then emerged as a theme and setting that allowed him to think and experience a renewed gaze (spontaneous, intuitive, aesthetic), a gaze that was both concrete and metaphysical that allowed him to rediscover nature.

Text from Fundación MAPFRE translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Charis, Lake Ediza
1937
19.1 x 24.1cm
Silver print mounted on board
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

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Exhibition: ‘Brett Weston: Significant Details’ at Pasadena Museum of California Art

Exhibition dates: 17th April – 11th September, 2016

Curator: Erin Aitali, PMCA Director of Exhibitions and Registrar

Installation view of the exhibition 'Brett Weston: Significant Details' at the Pasadena Museum of California Art

Installation photographs of the exhibition Brett Weston: Significant Details at the Pasadena Museum of California Art
Photos: © 2016 Don Milici

If your subject is essentially unrecognisable – a defining characteristic of many of Weston’s photographs – devoid of sentimentality, featuring an explosion of geometry as a form of Western expressionism, able to extract the microcosm from the macrocosm through an absence of human presence and apparent narrative – then your previsualisation must be spot on otherwise you loose clear focus as to just what it is you are trying to communicate. It’s all very well being obsessed with capturing the intricacies and rhythms of form, light and shadow, visual poetry in photography, but if that obsession has no ‘feeling’ outcome then you are doomed to failure.

Imagine (if you can) that master of documentary realism Eugène Atget placing his camera in just the wrong position for one of his photographs. The tripod just a little too low, the position a metre to the left of where it should have been. The resulting image would not feel like an Atget, the angles would not feel right, the mixture of objective and subjective would not be present, the magic of his photographs – recognisably his photographs – would be missing. What Atget does so convincingly is to combine the aesthetic with the documentary or representational. As G.H. Saxon Mills observes in his essay ‘Modern photography’ ‘”modern” photography means photography whose aim is partly or wholly aesthetic, as opposed to photography which is merely documentary or representational.’ Atget proves that both were possible within the same frame.

This is not the case with the photographs by Brett Weston in this posting. Although I have commented elsewhere on this website that, “Brett Weston’s pictures are ageing well – the decorative aesthetic seems to have more currency today than previously when the values of his father were predominant,” and admired the reductive minimalism of his photographs … this is not the case with these ‘significant details’. In this instance they are just representation, poor relations to the photographs of Minor White and Aaron Siskind.

I think that the best of his work is very fine – a sort of celebration of all that had gone before with a layer of super-fineness added. However he made many images that were a bit like a preacher rather than an artist. In some of his portfolios the choice of images is just plain weird, catering to the market rather than taking the chance to make a powerful statement. And photography aficionados remain unconvinced by his work, shying away from collecting it. Perhaps they know, or feel a lack of something, some spirit or other, or a seeming unevenness in the quality of his artistic production.

Perhaps it is his printing, which is a bit “Kodak meets EW” in the darkroom (even as his father entrusted him with printing some of his negatives). Weston achieved his good results because he was a careful craftsman, not an experimenter. Someone, I forget who, said that you never looked at his work when desperate for sustenance – and I think a lot of “connoisseurs” think that – and in a Brett Weston you can too often argue yourself out of the celebration. There is a certain dourness that is hard to overcome. I challenge you, now, to say one meaningful thing about any of the images presented here. They take you nowhere. They are either too tightly cropped (that lack of true previsualisation / placing the camera in the wrong position / lack of context) or rely on pattern and representation, and only that, to do the heavy lifting.

My feeling about his work is that he saw and felt many great things that he used in his work – but at the final hurdle, his implementation was always handled a little directly, or not a well as might have been… or is sometimes absent. Perhaps it’s just his viewpoint which seems to be too limited in a psychological sense. If Atget had photographed the city without those magnificent tripod positions and understanding of space, then they would have been dead. That’s how BW’s work sometimes feels. Instead of the space feeling larger than the camera can contain, on occasions his photographs feel enclosed and stilted.

Weston said, “There are a million choices for shot. At its simplest, photography is very complex. So I try to keep it simple and focus on things I can master.”

Sometimes, keeping things simple does not result in preternatural outcomes.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Pasadena Museum of California Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“My father was driven and so am I. You’re ruthless. You brush off your friends and women. He was much kinder than me. I don’t verbalize well and I don’t socialize much. Too time consuming. And I’m not a good salesman of my work. I love people, but they can be a drain. Some are stimulating; some are leeches. So I seek people on my own terms. Most artists are loners. I guess they have to be.”

Brett Weston

“Weston isn’t really a nature photographer… He was obsessed with capturing the intricacies and rhythms of form, light and shadow. Weston is as fascinated by close-ups of the exfoliating bark of a bristlecone pine or the spikes of a Joshua Tree as he is with the visual poetry of peeling paint on the side-panel of a rusted out truck.”

Jeffrey St. Clair. “A Natural Eye,” on the Counter Punch website, May 25, 2012 [Online] Cited 01/10/2021

Installation photographs of the exhibition Brett Weston: Significant Details at the Pasadena Museum of California Art
Photos: © 2016 Don Milici

Although Brett Weston (1911-1993) is best known for his striking scenic photographs, the majority of his work ranges from middle-distance scenes to close-up abstractions. These concentrated images share the high-contrast and graphic qualities of Weston’s panoramas while emphasising his affinity for “significant details” and the unprecedented attention to form, texture, shadow, and light that he explored throughout his nearly-seventy-year career.

Weston took up photography at the age of fourteen. Although he received basic technical instruction from his father, renowned photographer Edward Weston, Brett’s early efforts owed much to his intuition and innate eye. His elemental talent coupled with an unflagging commitment to his photographic vision – often at the expense of personal relationships and fiscal well-being – carried him from early critical acclaim, through difficult periods, to eventual financial success within his own lifetime.

By the age of twenty-five, Weston’s photographs were included in significant exhibitions both nationally and internationally, but despite early recognition he served as a WPA photographer during the Great Depression and as a Signal Corps photographer during World War II. By necessity, he also worked intermittently in the first half of his career as an industrial and portrait photographer. However, when he achieved prosperity beginning in the 1970s, he devoted himself exclusively to the photography and intercontinental expeditions that fulfilled him. His initial interest in abstracted details continually revealed itself, especially once he began using a new, smaller camera after health problems in the late 1960s forced him to abandon the bulky equipment he had used for over thirty years.

Early and continuing critical success notwithstanding, following Brett’s death, the comparison to his famed father left the younger Weston on the wrong side of a narrowing modern canon of photography. Reaffirming Weston’s legacy and his exceptional contributions to modernist photography, these uncharted, close-up images – more than half of which are on view for the first time – demonstrate the major themes present in Weston’s work: a focus on natural and urban landscapes and the objects therein, the absence of human presence and apparent narrative, and an extraordinary ability to extract the microcosm from the macrocosm.

Introduction text from the exhibition

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993) 'Untitled (Worm Wood, California)' c. 1937 (printed c. 1970) from the exhibition 'Brett Weston: Significant Details' at Pasadena Museum of California Art, April - Sept, 2016

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Worm Wood, California
c. 1937 (printed c. 1970)
Silver gelatin print
10 1/2 x 13 3/4 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

Although Weston’s wife Cicely provided the couple with a steady income, she became pregnant with the pair’s first (and only) child in 1937, providing Weston impetus to generate additional means of support. Hoping to replicate the financial success of Ansel Adams’s portfolio of limited edition original photographs, Weston produced one of his own. His first portfolio San Francisco (1937) consisted of twelve 8 x 10 original prints. Unlike the photograph Staircase, San Francisco (1928) included in this exhibition, the portfolio photos were panoramic vistas. However, without the robust support of a collector like Albert Bender, who both promoted and purchased enough of Adams’s portfolios to assure commercial success, Weston didn’t profit from his portfolio. He lacked not only the promotional skills and collector base but also refused gallery sales owing to his deep distrust and outrage at their commissions.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993) 'Wood' 1972 from the exhibition 'Brett Weston: Significant Details' at Pasadena Museum of California Art, April - Sept, 2016

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Wood
1972
Silver gelatin print
7 1/2 x 8 5/8 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

One of the most celebrated and prolific photographers of the twentieth century, Brett Weston (1911-1993) is best known for his striking scenic images, yet the bulk of his work ranges from middle-distance scenes to closeup abstractions. The Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) is proud to present Brett Weston: Significant Details, the first museum exhibition to focus on Weston’s close-up photography. The works – over half of which are on view for the first time – share the high-contrast and graphic qualities of Weston’s panoramic photographs while emphasising the “significant details,” the tendency toward abstraction and extremes in tonality that Weston explored through his nearly 60-year career. The exhibition further contextualises Weston within the pivotal Group f/64 and highlights how intuition and a dedication to photography in its purest form guided his practice.

Although the teaching of his father, famed modernist photographer Edward Weston, was invaluable and his influence undeniable, Weston’s practice was largely shaped by instinct and informal training. He took up photography at the age of 14 when, on an extended trip to Mexico with his father, he started photographing the crew of the SS Oaxaca with the elder Weston’s Graflex camera. This trip also coincided with the end of his formal education; he was enrolled at an English-speaking school, but dropped out within two weeks. While in Mexico, Weston became part of the modernist mileu, socialising with and viewing the work of some of the greatest artists of the time, including David Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco.

Weston’s professional entry into the world of photography occurred during a shift from the East Coast Pictorialists and their accentuation of romantic effects to the West Coast photographic movement, which coalesced with Group f/64 and their sharp images that captured daily life. Like the members of Group f/64, which included Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, Brett Weston focused primarily on two types of images: close-ups and the scenic view. However, Weston’s approach was distinct, tending toward highly graphic images, with intense areas of dark and highlights, rather than mid-grey tones used by many, including his father.

By the age of 25, Weston’s work had been included in the landmark international photography exhibition Film und Foto and in a solo exhibition at the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco. Though he received critical acclaim and his reputation grew, Weston remained dedicated to art for art’s sake and to creating pure, elemental photographs. He was a simple man and used the same equipment for most of his career. However, when health problems forced him to switch to a smaller camera – the Rollei – in 1968, he further experimented with close-up photographs, and his work became even more intent on exploring specific details and abstract qualities. In Torn Leaf, Hawaii (1978, below), for example, the brittle, curling leaf appears monumental on a black ground. It exists as a singular object, not fully contained within the composition, and the size is indeterminable without context.

The uncharted, close-up images that are the focus of Significant Details demonstrate the major themes present in Weston’s work: a play on scale, the absence of the human presence, and a refrain from imposed order. This exhibition features approximately 40 works taken over a period of 55 years, ranging from 1929 to 1984, and brings to the forefront the unprecedented attention to form, texture, shadow, and light that was the distinctive characteristic of Weston’s oeuvre.

Press release from the Pasadena Museum of California Art

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Wall, Europe
1971
Silver gelatin print
8 x 10 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

In 1971 Brett returned to Europe for the third time. While there, he captured both abstract images, like this one, and panoramas. Notably, this trip resulted in the photograph of Holland Canal, which Weston grew to hate, despite its commercial success or perhaps because of it, “I’m so sick of the thing but people love it. I could retire on sales of this print alone. I’d hate to tell you how many of these I’ve printed.” Although this scenic print wasn’t the legacy Weston desired for himself, it led to an overall increased attention from collectors interested in his work, including his abstractions.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993) 'Untitled (Cracked Mud, High Sierra, California)' 1960

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Cracked Mud, High Sierra, California
1960
Silver gelatin print
8 x 10 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

Direct evidence of human presence was rare in Weston’s photos. But here, two playful sets of handprints on the mud provide scale, which would otherwise be indeterminable in the image.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Electrical Towers, Metal
c. 1975
Silver gelatin print
8 x 10 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

Brett Weston: Significant Details

Brett Weston, born in 1911 in Tropico, CA (now Glendale), took up photography at the age of fourteen while on an extended trip to Mexico with his father, famed photographer Edward Weston. In Mexico for just over a year, his time there was pivotal in many ways, not only marking the start of his photography career, but also the end of his formal education. His father allowed him to drop out of the international school after two short weeks and provided the younger Weston with basic instructions in photography. Still, Brett relied heavily on his innate sensibilities toward form and tonality, evident in Tin Roof, Mexico, an early photograph from 1926 featuring a cropped view of a jagged roofline with dramatic dark shadows splitting the image. Weston also benefited from a social education of sorts. Through connections of his father’s mistress, photographer Tina Modotti, Weston became a part of the Mexican modernist milieu, socialising with and viewing the work of some of the greatest artists of the time, including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

During his nearly-seventy-year career, Weston’s talent and unique vision developed into two related types of works, panoramic landscapes and abstracted close-ups. The image most associated with Weston was and probably still is Holland Canal from 1971. The photograph of a tree-lined canal with still water reflecting a flawless image of the surrounding landscape is sensual and magnificently balanced. However, the photographer bemoaned his connection to this particular work and its extreme popularity saying, “I’m so sick of the thing, but people love it.” Although this print and other panoramic images, such as Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska (1973), came to typify his work in the public’s mind, the bulk of Weston’s photographs range from middle-distance scenes to close-ups, which became increasingly abstract beginning in the 1950s. Brett Weston: Significant Details focuses on the close-up works that epitomise his unique and unwavering vision. These images share the high-contrast and graphic qualities of Weston’s well-known scenic photographs while emphasising what the photography historian Beaumont Newhall characterised as his affinity for “significant details.” Weston applied this penchant for details to natural and urban environments alike. Another early image, Stairway, Grandview Park, San Francisco from 1928, offers a fragmented view of a San Francisco stairwell. Without context, the unpopulated image’s narrative possibilities are limited; instead, the emphasis is on the orderly, graphic form of the staircase.

From the beginning of his career, Weston’s work was celebrated by institutions and peers. The year following Stairway, Weston’s work was included in the landmark 1929 German photography exhibition Film und Foto, and the early 1930s saw his association with Group f/64, a distinctly West Coast movement of “straight” photographers (as opposed to the East Coast Pictorialist tradition, which was waning at this time) that comprised Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, and others. Brett’s work appeared in their 1932 inaugural exhibition at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. The following year, both San Francisco Stairway and Tin Roofs (presumably the same works discussed in this essay) were included with forty-three other photographs in a solo exhibition at the de Young.

Although Weston saw early success with his work included in major exhibitions, this did not translate into a steady income. Like most artists during the Great Depression, the Federal Art Project – a branch of the Works Progress Administration – employed Weston, first as a sculptor and then later as a photographer. He quit the FAP in December of 1936 after about two and half years because he had no passion for the documentary nature of the work and it impinged upon time for his personal projects, something that he could not bear for long. Throughout the thirties and forties, he worked intermittently – and discontentedly – as a portrait and industrial photographer to stave off poverty and support his daughter who was born in 1938. In complete contrast to the realistic, documentary style of his FAP and commissioned works, an untitled photograph from 1937 is an extreme close-up of paint that is almost organic in appearance, with leaf-like veins in the upper portion of the image. The subject is essentially unrecognisable, which is a defining characteristic of many of Weston’s photographs.

The slim Depression years segued into the tumultuousness of World War II, during which Weston served in the US Army before a much-requested transfer to the US Signal Corps stationed him to work as a photographer in New York. At the end of the war, when Brett returned to Carmel, CA, where the Weston family had made their long-time home, he found his father beginning to show marked symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, which would increasingly debilitate the elder Weston in the last decade of his life. Before Edward’s death in 1958, he enlisted his sons Brett and Cole and a small group of trusted assistants to secure his lasting legacy by making thousands of prints under his supervision. In addition to printing work for his father, during this time, Brett also worked on his Guggenheim fellowship project and his second and third portfolios, White Sands (1949) and New York (1954).

Besides photographing the beaches of Carmel, one of which was dubbed “Weston Beach,” Brett also traveled up and down the California coast countless times over the decades. He repeatedly returned to capture the dunes of Oceano, and these images range from sweeping vistas to striking abstractions. An image from 1952, Dune, Oceano, although not technically a detail, falls into the latter category. The dunes appear wave-like and swirling, and a dark, somewhat-menacing shadow at the centre – similar to the roofline image taken in Mexico – provides graphic force. Jellyfish, California, another beach image, taken in 1967, is a close-up of one of the bulbous marine animals washed ashore. In contrast to the ethereal and weightless appearance jellyfish take underwater, it looks monumental and grotesquely beautiful. The curving form expands beyond the picture’s boundaries and in place of luminescence is a gradation of pure white reflections to jet-black striated patterns on the bell.

Although the tendency to work close-up had always been present in Weston’s work, it became much more pronounced and obvious after health issues necessitated a change in camera equipment. For over thirty years, Weston worked with a large format 8 x 10 camera and preferred contact prints (versus enlarging from smaller negatives). However, a heart attack in 1967 and an ongoing battle with angina forced Weston to switch to a smaller camera because he could no longer manage the bulky equipment. In 1968, he began using the Rollei SL-66 almost exclusively. The camera used roll film that produced small, square negatives and allowed the artist to work close-up with ease. As a result, his work became even more intent on exploring specific elements and abstract qualities. Sand and Kelp from around 1970 is a lyrical example of this. Individual grains of sand are visible and marked by traces of implied movement, both in the dancing shadows of the kelp and the trailing patterns lightly indented into the surface.

While Weston had traveled steadily and as often as he could afford to in his younger years – expeditions that included Europe, Japan, the Pacific Northwest, Baja California, and Mexico – his later years were spent primarily in Hawaii. The tropical climate was beneficial for his health, and the varied terrain provided limitless visual appeal. In 1979, the photographer purchased land there on the slopes of a volcanic mountain. He became especially engrossed with the lava formations and the verdant and spectacular plant life, which he photographed until his death in 1993.

Weston achieved, within his lifetime, the recognition and financial comforts of a highly esteemed photographer. Even so, following his death, Brett’s reputation was eclipsed in favour of his father, due in part to the notion that there wasn’t room for two Westons in the canon of modernist photography. The 2008 exhibition Out of the Shadow (Oklahoma City Museum of Art and The Phillips Collection) and his biography A Restless Eye (2011) have begun to remedy this situation. Significant Details furthers that work by centring on the uncharted, closeup images that characterise Weston’s innate and distinctive eye. These photographs reveal the major themes present in his oeuvre: a focus on natural and urban landscapes and the objects therein, the absence of human presence and apparent narrative, and an extraordinary ability to extract the microcosm from the macrocosm.

Erin Aitali, Director of Exhibitions and Registrar

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Broken Glass, California
1954
Silver gelatin print
8 x 10 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Torn Leaf, Hawaii
1978
Silver gelatin print
10 3/4 x 12 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Jellyfish, California
1967
Silver gelatin print
7 5/8 x 9 5/8 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Cracked Paint
1937 (printed later)
Silver gelatin print
12 1/2 x 10 1/8 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

Like Broken Glass, California (1954, above), this image of cracked paint is an extreme close-up to the point that the subject is indistinguishable. Instead pure form becomes the focus. This intense focus also characterises Weston’s approach to life; he prioritised his photography above all else, often at the expense of both financial stability and personal relationships (he was married four times and had countless lovers).

In 1937 Weston was living with his first wife, Cicely, in San Francisco who was employed as a violinist in the WPA symphony. Weston had recently quit the WPA because, as he explained in a letter to his father in December 1936, “It has been a good thing in many ways but after 2 1/2 years I feel that I have had enough experience of this kind. I feared it was beginning to tell on me as well as my work. I would rather divorce, starve, anything, than have this happen. The actual work I’ve been doing for the work program has been child’s play but the sacrifice of one’s priceless days… has become too much.”

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)
Snow
1954
Silver gelatin print
9 1/2 x 7 5/8 inches
The Brett Weston Archive
Courtesy Christian Keesee Collection, 2016

Pasadena Museum of California Art

This museum closed in October 2018

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