Edward weston short biography
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His influence is perhaps most evident in the work of photographers Paul Caponigro and Wynn Bullock. In Mexico, the artist created 750 photos of subjects that varied from the desert landscape and ordinary household fixtures to portraits of Modotti and political activists he met through her, such as Guadalupe de Rivera (Diego Rivera's wife at the time).
Weston's time in Mexico was also a time of reflection and self-examination.
Later, in 1941 using photographs of the East and South, Weston provided illustrations for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Edward Weston has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." In 1947 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and he stopped photographing soon thereafter.
He spent the remaining ten years of his life overseeing the printing of more than 1,000 of his most famous images.
This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License. The artist died on January 1, 1958 in Carmel. Weston was heavily influenced by photographer Margrethe Mather, who became his model and studio assistant for ten years.
His series of sensuous nudes, often photographed in California’s dramatic landscapes, exemplified his belief that the camera could reveal the purity and essence of the human form. 1936 marked the start of Weston’s series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, California, which are often considered some of his finest work.
He became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for experimental work in 1936.
Indeed, the cabbage leaf becomes a sculptural work of art in its own right, elevating the common edible to an object of fine art, and thereby supporting Weston's efforts to expand his audience's visual consciousness of the world. The gift came with handwritten instructions from Weston's father and basic recommendations about lighting and how to choose worthy subjects.
He further explored abstraction through architectural studies and desert landscapes, reducing his subjects to elemental shapes and textures.
In 1932, Weston co-founded Group f/64 alongside Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and other West Coast photographers. This photograph and others in the Armco series mark a turning point in Weston's style from pictorialism's soft focus forms to straight photography's sharper resolution and detail.
But with his final departure from Mexico came the subsequent farewell to his lover, Tina Modotti.
Following his travels in the late 1920s, Weston created a new body of work that would become some of his most recognizable and modern photographs. In 1911, Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. Though Charis was not a photographer as Mather and Modotti had been, she assisted Weston in his efforts to capture the American landscape and promoted his work through her writing.
Charis's childhood home located near Wildcat Creek in Carmel, California, became the couple's new abode.
In so doing, Weston effectively brought modern photography out of the city and into rural America and, like Paul Cézanne, Joan Miro, and other modern painters, challenged the traditional depth of field one expects from a landscape.
Gelatin Silver Print - SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA
Biography of Edward Weston
Childhood and Education
The son of an obstetrician and his pragmatic wife, Edward Henry Weston was born on March 24, 1886 in Highland Park, Illinois.
He captured vast, rolling landscapes that seemed to devolve into flat patterns; his cropped nude forms became mere shapes; and curvaceous vegetables began to take on human qualities. He used the funds to travel throughout the American Southwest with Charis Wilson, who became his second wife a year after he divorced Flora in 1937.
In 1937 and again in 1938, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, becoming the first photographer to receive the prestigious award. Although their marriage would never recover from Weston's philandering and extended absences, Flora must have realized the importance of her husband's work, because she financed his second trip to Mexico.
Taking inspiration from his surroundings, new relationships and famed admirers - including artists like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco - Weston returned to California in 1926 to begin the next level of his career that would propel him to well-deserved fame.
Edward Weston Biography
Edward Weston (b.1886 - d.1958) began photographing at the early age of sixteen after receiving a Bull's Eye #2 camera from his father, Edward Burbank Weston. For Weston's second wife and model, Charis Wilson, the beauty of his nudes lay in "the rhythmic patterns, the intensely perceived sculptural forms, the subtle modulations of tone, of which these small, perfect images were composed." And yet Weston's nudes have provoked some Feminist critics to question why the artist, by so drastically cropping some of his nudes, sacrifices the individuality and identity of the sitter so that he may realize this goal.