Edward Weston was a 20th century American photographer perhaps best known for his pioneering photography of the female nude. His innovative approach to the people and places of the American West have been widely influential on art photography. His subjects include landscapes, nudes, portraits, and still lifes.
Weston and Tina Moditti opened a photographic studio in Mexico City. It was here that many important and influential black and white photographs were created. Additional work in natural forms, the nude, closeups, and landscapes were made after relocating to California where he spent most of his life. Some of his most notable works include the nude amongst sand dunes or rock formations.
Edward Weston’s most celebrated fine art photographs include Pepper No 30, of a bell pepper, and a nude of Charis Wilson cradling her legs between interlocked hands and her downturned head.
Edward Weston was the first photographer to be awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, in 1937. He founded the f/64 group of photographers with Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and other luminary photographers of the time. Weston is credited with advancing the notion that each photographer should have a personal aesthetic, rather than a formulaic, documentary approach. In this way, he is one of the parents of the contemporary notion of fine art photography as an expression of artistic vision rather than a technical endeavour.
Weston’s contribution to the field of art photography includes a sense of curiosity and experimentation over his 40 year career. Weston’s work was profoundly independent from the prevailing photographic style of his time. His hundreds of famous images shaped the history of American photography. His signature style, late in his career, was a full tonal scale of edge-to-edge sharpness, produced on a large format 8×10 inch Graflex film camera.
Edward Weston notable subjects
- Tina Modotti
- Violet Romer
- Max Eastman
- Armco Steel
- Nancy Newhall
Edward Weston biographical summary
Born: March 24, 1886, Highland Park, Illinois
Died: January 1, 1958, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Period: Surrealism
Spouses: Charis Wilson (1939–1946), Flora May Chandler (1909–1937)
Children: Brett Weston, Cole Weston, Edward Chandler Weston
Parents: Alice Jeanette Brett, Edward Weston