Early 20th Century

EDWARD WESTON
(1886-1958)

      Edward Weston was one of the great American photographers who revolutionized and modernized photography in every sense of the world.  Whether photographing elemental landscapes, sculptural nudes or everyday objects, Weston's brilliance was allied to a democratic approach to his subject matter. Edward's interest of style fell first into mechanical imitations of painting styles, but soon he became restless with pictorial-ism, which took inspiration from impressionism and symbolism. In time though he found a new sense of style that fit his taste in photography and that was constructivism and cubism. Constructivism was a style or movement in which assorted mechanical objects are combines into abstract mobile structural forms and then with cubism, Edward abandoned the use of single viewpoint and within his photos showed simple geometric shapes. Also he focused on realism, which for Edward he was more focused on the meaning behind the object himself. Everyday object wasn't just everyday object to him. He would take it on an abstract view.
      What Edward Weston wanted as he states, "to make the commonplace unusual" and this statement of his has been through photographic practice to the present day. Something that I found very intriguing about this photographer was that the photos he took, when they would come out in this black and white tone, that tone alone invests everyday objects, in both such a natural and man-made way, captured in such an amazing way, that it does seem to appear almost unreal. Take for example, these two pictures below. What do they look like at first? Two scrunched up people? A flattened our flower? Well, the photo to the left is actually a bell pepper and the photo to the right is actually an upside-down mushroom. Amazing right? Edward was able to turn humble objects into this type of modernistic sculpture by just giving his 8x10 inch view camera a turn.The bell pepper being photographed in this way kind of gives the society the expectation of form compared to realities truth. As for this mushroom, the way that it's not placed directly in the center breaks the common standard of food photography. Also, even though this is in black and white, no attention is taken off this piece of art because of the high definition and white background, attention is being brought into the fine details on the mushroom from an upside-down view and with the shadows delivered upon the mushroom, it totally dramatizes the whole photo overall.
      Edward became the founder member of Group f/64 that formed in 1932 and included Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Consuelo Kanaga, and Willard van Dyke. Him, along with his teammates called themselves f/64 because that's the aperture that they set to gain maximum image sharpness of both foreground and distance. Edward never retouched, enlarged or cropped out his photographs.


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