Edward Weston FROM OUR EDITORS
Few photographers have proven more influential than Edward Weston. After a decade of devotion to pictorialism, a movement characterized by its painterly approach to photography, Weston hardened the focus and endeavored to depict the world around him more precisely as he saw it. Whether pointing his camera at a pepper, a nude figure, a desert landscape, or New York City, he taught us, over the course of more than three decades, new ways of seeing. Edward Weston gathers the photographer's best work from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s into an excellent career overview.
SYNOPSIS
Few photographers have proven more influential than Edward Weston. After a decade of devotion to pictorialism, a movement characterized by its very painterly approach to photography, Weston hardened the focus and endeavored to depict the world around him more precisely as he saw it. Whether pointing his camera at a pepper, a nude figure, a desert landscape, or New York City, he taught us, over the course of more than three decades, new ways of seeing. Edward Weston gathers the photographer's best work from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s into an excellent career overview. In this excerpt, no less an authority than Ansel Adams assesses what it was that so set Weston apart.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Blossfeldt, Sander, and Weston all blossomed with the publication of their first books around 1930, were direct in their use of the medium, and rank among photography's defining masters. Yet they each had a unique style and focused on distinct subject matter, making their works instantly recognizable. These three books, part of a new photography series from Taschen, are sufficiently monumental to honor the artists' talents but still convey their singular talents. Germans Sander and Blossfeldt pioneered the "new objectivity" with their massive survey projects. Sander set out to document all of society in hundreds of portraits, typically titled "Country Farmer Dressed for a Funeral" or "Middle-Class Family." The influence of his style, stern yet eminently humane, is more present than ever in current photography. A prominent collector and photography writer, Heiting has made excellent work of a difficult task selecting more than 100 of these portraits for inclusion and augmenting them with lesser-known architectural and landscape photographs. Blossfeldt originally photographed plant specimens to help his students in art school with copying natural forms. But with the publication of Art Forms in Nature (1928), containing 60 of these photogravures, he was hailed as master and went on to publish two more acclaimed compendia. Adam, a photography writer, offers stunning reproductions of all the prints found in all three of Blossfeldt's volumes as well as the original essays from the time. The Weston volume will give readers a new appreciation of his almost abstract nature studies and nudes. Heiting has again chosen exemplary works from Weston's more diverse oeuvre, combining well-known signature pieces with unexpected images. Terrence Pitts, director of the Center for Creative Photography, has added an especially well-researched essay to accompany the selections. These books are all well done, but based on the popularity of their work in the United States, Weston belongs in all public libraries, Sander in medium and large public libraries, and Blossfeldt in all libraries with a serious interest in photography; the entire series would be at home in any academic institution.--Doug McClemont, New York Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Art & Photography
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