BOOK:Edward Weston, Taschen Publications
By creating photographs that transformed his subjects into abstractions of shapes and patterns, Edward Weston helped bring the medium out of the Victorian age that favored pictorialist imitations of painting and into the modern era wherein the photography became a celebrated medium in its own right. The book “Edward Weston -Uncompromising Passion” by Taschen Publications in 252 pages presents the sensual and straight photography of Edward Weston. Born in Illinois, Edward Weston received his first camera from his father in 1902; he attended the Illinois College of Photography from 1908 to 1911. From 1911 to 1922 he operated a portrait studio in Tropico, California. The Pictorialist style in which he was working earned him commercial and critical success, but by 1919 he had turned to abstract photographs based on body parts and employing unusual angles. On a trip to Ohio in 1922, he photographed the clean lines and abstract shapes of the Armco Steelworks, and when he met Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and Charles Sheeler in New York later that year, he gained their support when he showed them this Armco work. Weston subsequently abandoned his Pictorialist style and concentrated on precise studies of such forms as fruits, vegetables, shells, and rocks. In 1928, after a year managing a Mexico City studio with Tina Modotti, he returned to California and photographed the landscape at Point Lobos, incorporating his studies of natural forms. In 1932, he cofounded, along with six other photographers, the f/64 group, which required its members to use the large-format view camera, a small lens aperture, and contact printing in order to achieve precise to detail and careful tonal variations. The landscape photographs that Weston created around this time followed the tenets of f/64 and are some of his most celebrated works. Weston received the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a photographer, among many honors and awards.-Dimitris Lempesis
