One of photography’s greatest pioneers, Edward Weston played a major role in shaping our perception of reality. The strength of his vision spanned fads and eras of the art world. Through his lifetime body of work, which includes indelible images of nudes, peppers, rock and shells, clouds, and landscapes, Weston awakened his viewers to the sensuous qualities of organic forms, and provided them with visual metaphors for the world’s most elemental natural forces. The subtleties of tone and the sculptural formal design of his works have become the standards by which much later photographic practice has been measured. Ansel Adams wrote “Weston is, in the real sense, one of the few creative artists of today. He has recreated the matter-forms and forces of nature; he has made these forms eloquent of the fundamental unity of the world. His work illuminates man’s inner journey toward perfection of the spirit.”
The exhibition is comprised of thirty-five photographs spanning Weston’s entire photographic career. Approximately half of the photographs on view will be on loan from museums and important private collections. Several exquisite early platinum prints will be included. The Source from 1921 exemplifies this early work. Here the nude torso seems to be entirely delineated by rays of mystical light before Weston’s lens.
Master prints of Weston’s classic studies of peppers and shells will be on view, including the quintessential Pepper No. 30 as well as the iconic Bedpan of 1930, in which the most mundane bedside tool is made to suggest Brancusi’s Bird In Space or a great ballet dancer standing on point.
