From Publishers Weekly
From light-control to master-printing, Weston meticulously glorified on film nautilus shells, green peppers and household implements. Less famous but impressive in a selection gathered here for the first time are the portraits that made up most of his life's work. Quietly catching on large-format film his models' characters, Weston in the 1920s and '30s expanded existing norms of background and composition in portraying such personalities as D.H. Lawrence, Diego Rivera, Robinson Jeffers, Jo Davidson, Henry Fonda and Ansel Adams, along with his own sons and various friends and associates. Included are several nudes of his protegee, model and lover, Tina Modotti, as well as some of his second wife, Charis Wilson. Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Aperture. 1995. 96p. photogs. ISBN 0-89381-605-1. $40. PHOTOG Weston's (1886-1958) photographic career began in 1911 and ended in 1948, with the onset of Parkinson's disease. Beaumont Newhall called Weston the founding father of American photography; certainly his straightforward, modernist approach dominated American photography until well after his death. Of these two new books, editor Mora's is the more valuable for history of photography and fine arts collections. His survey presents Weston's life comprehensively and exhaustively than has been attempted in any of the numerous Weston monographs before. The essays offer biographical information and analyze the photographs in the context of what Weston was doing and thinking at the time. Mora (former editor of Les Cahiers de la Photographie) provides an introduction and discusses Weston's work in Mexico; other writers, all well-qualified curators and academics, discuss such topics as Weston's earliest work; his experimental work with nudes and natural forms; and the work Weston did under his two Guggenheim fellowships from 1937 to 1939 (the first ever awarded for photography). The book draws on two major collections: those at the Center for Creative Photography, which has the Weston Archives, and the Lane Collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. From about 10,000 images, the book shows 130, 25 percent of which have never before been reproduced. The photographs are arranged chronologically and are grouped to accompany the five essays. The illustrations are fine though not as rich as those in Aperture's Portraits. This serious, scholarly book, with well-written, engaging essays is appropriate for research collections and lay readers alike. Aperture's Edward Weston: Portraits is a less ambitious and more casual presentation of one part of Weston's portfolio, the portraits that earned his keep and comprise 70 percent of his work, according to the book jacket. In the finest reproduction quality, the most familiar portraits of famous artists, writers, and others who featured in Weston's life and work are presented in roughly chronological order. Cole Weston's one-page recollection of his father is warm and anecdotal. Morgan (contributing writer at Elle and Mirabella and author of Martin Munkasci, Aperture, 1992) contributed an essay that will appeal to the informed lay reader rather than to specialists in photography. Weston's life is sketched out, and Morgan tells us about the people who were Weston's portrait subjects and models. However, in contrast to Edward Weston: Forms of Passion, there is little analysis of Weston's developing aesthetic except those thoughts of Weston himself from his Daybooks, quotes from which accompany some of the photographs.?Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, BrooklynCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Review
"As Edward Weston: Portraits shows, Weston didn't just photograph women, he exposed them. They fill the frame, they spill over it; their bodies are cropped so that discrete parts—legs, feet, and buttocks, the curve of ribs and breast—become the entire subject. It's as though the lens, and the photographer behind it, were touching and caressing them."--Michael Boodro, Vogue



Review
"As Edward Weston: Portraits shows, Weston didn't just photograph women, he exposed them. They fill the frame, they spill over it; their bodies are cropped so that discrete parts—legs, feet, and buttocks, the curve of ribs and breast—become the entire subject. It's as though the lens, and the photographer behind it, were touching and caressing them."--Michael Boodro, Vogue



Review
"As Edward Weston: Portraits shows, Weston didn't just photograph women, he exposed them. They fill the frame, they spill over it; their bodies are cropped so that discrete parts—legs, feet, and buttocks, the curve of ribs and breast—become the entire subject. It's as though the lens, and the photographer behind it, were touching and caressing them."--Michael Boodro, Vogue



Book Description
Weston spent the greatest part of his towering career setting a standard of photographic portraiture. Included are images of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, and James Cagney. Together these photographs create a powerful volume that demands a fresh look at this central endeavor of his life's work.



About the Author
Although revered for his vibrant still lifes and haunting California landscapes, Edward Weston spent the major part of his career, from 1917 to 1948, perfecting a standard of photographic portraiture that has rarely been surpassed. Weston's timeless images of the fascinating people who crowded the canvas of his free-spirited life- among them, Robinson Jeffers, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, Igor Stravinsky, James Cagney, Lincoln Steffens, D.H. Lawrence, Carl Sandburg, e.e. cummings, and Dorothea Lange-comprise a startling 70 percent of the photographer's oeuvre

Susan Morgan is a contributing writer at Elle and Mirabella and the author of the 1992 Aperture monograph Martin Munkacsi.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Edward Weston Portraits is the first published collection of Edward Weston's most revealing portraits and shows the artist at his most inspired: "rendering the very substance, the deeper inner image" of sons, lovers, friends, and fellow artists with such commanding immediacy that they linger in the mind's eye long after viewing. Weston seized the photographic moment through a shrewd and unusual technique: by only pretending to shoot film for a period of time before actually taking the photograph, and then flashing the lens cap without the subjects' knowing, he cleverly guided them beyond "the pose," even allowing his sitters to wander freely about the studio. From the smoldering intensity on the face of Mexican painter Jose Clemete Orozco to the beguilingly sensual elegance achieved in nude depictions of Charis Wilson - Weston's greatest sitter and most enduring love - the photographer again and again transformed the realistic into the immanently mystical. Encompassing 72 duotone prints, Edward Weston Portraits treats its subject with the care and respect that Weston did his: on equal terms. A foreword by Cole Weston and a biographical essay by Susan Morgan, correspondence from Weston's lifelong friends, and excerpted texts from his daybooks all enhance and deepen our understanding of the photographs. A new window on Edward Weston's supreme talent, a documentary glimpse of his extraordinary circle of acquaintances, and a paradigm of photographic portaiture. Edward Weston Portraits evinces what Robinson Jeffers called "unmeasured power, incredible passion, enormous craft."

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

From light-control to master-printing, Weston meticulously glorified on film nautilus shells, green peppers and household implements. Less famous but impressive in a selection gathered here for the first time are the portraits that made up most of his life's work. Quietly catching on large-format film his models' characters, Weston in the 1920s and '30s expanded existing norms of background and composition in portraying such personalities as D.H. Lawrence, Diego Rivera, Robinson Jeffers, Jo Davidson, Henry Fonda and Ansel Adams, along with his own sons and various friends and associates. Included are several nudes of his protge, model and lover, Tina Modotti, as well as some of his second wife, Charis Wilson. (Nov.)

Library Journal