HAYLEY LERCH
Staff Writer
As children of the digital age, youth take pictures constantly. They use them to document their weekend adventures and to remember their travels. They post them on Facebook or print them out from our computers. Though American photographer Edward Weston was born near the turn of the 20th century and developed prints in a dark room rather than a drugstore or his own room, he shared this fascination — Weston also attempted to make sense of the world through the lens of his camera.
“I want the greater mystery of things revealed more clearly than the eyes can see,” according to one of Weston’s many day books in 1930.
“Edward Weston: Enduring Vision” includes more than 100 photographs, which highlight Weston’s talent for bringing such mystery to the surface. The exhibition, on display at the Getty Museum until Nov. 25, is appropriately titled, since Weston’s images are timeless.
The exhibition traces the evolution of his style from his pictorialist tendencies, including his use of soft focus and his attempts to create photos resembling paintings, to the abstraction and intersecting planes that characterize the Modern approach for which he is best known.
Brett Abbott, associate curator at the Getty Museum, describes Weston’s influence in the field of photography, including his style and technical skill.
“He was innovative, he was exploring subjects in a way that other photographers weren’t doing,” Abbott said. “His images were fresh.”
Weston began as a portrait photographer in the early 1900s in Topico, Calif., which is now part of Glendale. The exhibit includes many of Weston’s early portraits, which are dramatic in their composition and lighting. In 1923, Weston moved to Mexico, where his style began to move in a new direction.
“He begins to focus more on the geometrical structures of his figures, pictures become a little more abstract,” Abbott said. “It becomes less about the portrait and more about graphic art and how a picture is structured.”
While in Mexico, Weston became interested in photographing the sky. The exhibition includes a 1926 photo of a cloud that exemplifies Weston’s ability to make people take a second look at the world to which we’ve become accustomed.
“The cloud isolated in the sky is abstract and also recognizable,” Abbott said. “Weston is constantly balancing between these two extremes — each picture falls somewhere in between, but each one in a different place.”
Weston continued to develop his modern technique upon moving back to Southern California in 1926, when he began focusing on everyday objects like fruits and vegetables.
In 1932, he co-founded a group of photographers called f/64, which refers to the smallest aperture setting on a large-format camera. This setting allows for the sharpest image quality, and achieving this crispness was the aim of the group. This quality is characteristic of Weston’s later photographs, including his famous images of peppers and sea shells shown in exquisite detail.
“He’s trying to maximize photography’s ability to show the world as a highly detailed, beautiful image,” said Michael Zakian, director of the Weisman Museum of Art.
Though Weston’s subjects are portrayed in fine detail, and they are abstracted to the point that nudes and landscapes begin to resemble one another. Weston’s photographs reveal his stated belief that “all basic forms are so closely related as to be visually equivalent.”
The roots of a radish in a 1933 photograph are as long and lean as the limbs of his model and lover, Chara Wilson, in a 1934 photograph. Photos of the stunning dunes of Oceano, Calif., draw parallels to the curvature of the female body in Weston’s nudes.
Weston’s photographs reveal the richness of California’s landscape, the human form, and commonplace items. All the while, they evoke a sense that the camera, when placed in the correct hands, can help us achieve clarity and recognize beauty from every angle.
Weston’s photography exhibit is available to view at the Getty Museum Sundays, and Tuesdays through Thursdays, between 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m.
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