Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was an American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers"Pitts, 13 and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes, and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessential American, and especially Californian, approach to modern photography"Pitts, 27 because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.
Weston was born in Chicago and moved to California when he was 2. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images.
In 1947 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and he soon stopped photographing. He spent the remaining ten years of his life overseeing the printing of more than 1,000 of his most famous images.
Life and work
1886–1906: Early life
Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois, the second child and only son of Edward Burbank Weston, an obstetrician, and Alice Jeanette Brett, a Shakespearean actress. His mother died when he was five years old and he was raised mostly by his sister Mary, whom he called "May" or "Maisie". She was nine years older than he, and they developed a very close bond that was one of the few steady relationships in Weston's life.Warren (2008), 10
His father remarried when he was nine, but neither Weston nor his sister got along with their new stepmother and stepbrother. After May was married and left their home in 1897, Weston's father devoted most of his time to his new wife and her son. Weston was left on his own much of the time; he stopped going to school and withdrew into his own room in their large home.
As a present for his 16th birthday Weston's father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Bull's-Eye No. 2, which was a simple box camera. He took it on vacation in the Midwest, and by the time he returned home his interest in photography was enough to lead him to purchase a used 5 × 7 inch view camera. He began photographing in Chicago parks and a farm owned by his aunt, and developed his own film and prints. Later he would remember that even at that early age his work showed strong artistic merit. He said, "I feel that my earliest work of 1903 ‒ though immature ‒ is related more closely, both with technique and composition, to my latest work than are several of my photographs dating from 1913 to 1920, a period in which I was trying to be artistic."Conger (1992), biography, 1
In 1904 May and her family moved to California, leaving Weston further isolated in Chicago. He earned a living by taking a job at a local department store, but he continued to spend most of his free time taking photos, Within two years he felt confident enough of his photography that he submitted his work to the magazine Camera and Darkroom, and in the April 1906 issue they published a full-page reproduction of his picture Spring, Chicago. This is the first known publication of any of his photographs.
In September 1904, Weston took part in the men's double American round archery event at the 1904 Summer Olympics with his father also taking part in the same event.
1906–1923: Becoming a photographer
At his sister's urging Weston left Chicago in the spring of 1906 and moved near May's home in Tropico, California (now a neighborhood in Glendale). He decided to stay there and pursue a career in photography, but he soon realized he needed more professional training. A year later he moved to Effingham, Illinois, to enroll in the Illinois College of Photography. They taught a nine-month course, but Weston finished all of the class work in six months. The school refused to give him a diploma unless he paid for the full nine months; Weston refused and instead moved back to California in the spring of 1908.
He briefly worked at the photography studio of George Steckel in Los Angeles, as a negative retoucher. Within a few months he moved to the more established studio of Louis Mojonier. For the next several years he learned the techniques and business of operating a photography studio under Mojonier's direction.
Within days of his visit to Tropico, Weston was introduced to his sister's best friend, Flora May Chandler. She was a graduate of the Normal School, later to become UCLA. She assumed the position of a grade-school teacher in Tropico. She was seven years older than Weston and a distant relative of Harry Chandler, who at that time was described as the head of "the single most powerful family in Southern California". This fact did not go unnoticed by Weston and his biographers.
On January 30, 1909, Weston and Chandler married in a simple ceremony. The first of their four sons, Edward Chandler Weston (1910–1993), known as Chandler, was born on April 26, 1910. Named Edward Chandler, after Weston and his wife, he later became a photographer as well.
In 1910 Weston opened his own business, called "The Little Studio", in Tropico. His sister later asked him why he opened his studio in Tropico rather than in the nearby metropolis of Los Angeles, and he replied "Sis, I'm going to make my name so famous that it won't matter where I live."Foley, 17
For the next three years he worked, alone and sometimes with the assistance of family members in his studio. Even at that early stage of his career he was highly particular about his work; in an interview at that time he said "Photographic plates are nothing to me unless I get what I want. I have used thirty of them at a sitting if I did not secure the effect to suit me."Newhall (1984), 5
His critical eye paid off for him and he quickly gained more recognition for his work. He won prizes in national competitions, published several more photographs and wrote articles for magazines such as Photo-Era and American Photography, championing the pictorial style.
On December 16, 1911, Weston's second son, Theodore Brett Weston (1911–1993), was born. He became a long-time artistic collaborator with his father and an important photographer on his own.
Sometime in the fall of 1913, Los Angeles photographer, Margrethe Mather visited Weston's studio because of his growing reputation, and within a few months they developed an intense relationship.Warren (2001), 10–11 Weston was a quiet Midwestern transplant to California, and Mather was a part of the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was very outgoing and artistic in a flamboyant way, and her permissive sexual morals were far different from the conservative Weston at the time – Mather had been a prostitute and was bisexual with a preference for women.Warren (2001), 13–15 Mather presented a stark contrast to Weston's home life; his wife Flora was described as a "homely, rigid Puritan, and an utterly conventional woman, with whom he had little in common since he abhorred conventions" ‒ and he found Mather's uninhibited lifestyle irresistible and her photographic vision intriguing.
He asked Mather to be his studio assistant, and for the next decade they worked closely together, making individual and jointly signed portraits of writers Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman. A joint exhibition of their work in 2001 revealed that during this period Weston emulated Mather's style and, later, her choice of subjects. On her own Mather photographed "fans, hands, eggs, melons, waves, bathroom fixtures, seashells and birds wings, all subjects that Weston would also explore."Warren (2001), 35 A decade later he described her as "the first important person in my life, and perhaps even now, though personal contact has gone, the most important."Daybooks, I ,145 In early 1915 Weston began keeping detailed journals he later came to call his "Daybooks". For the next two decades he recorded his thoughts about his work, observations about photography, and his interactions with friends, lovers and family. On December 6, 1916, a third son, Lawrence Neil Weston, was born. He also followed in the footsteps of his father and became a well-known photographer. It was during this period that Weston first met photographer Johan Hagemeyer, whom Weston mentored and lent his studio to from time to time. Later, Hagemeyer would return the favor by letting Weston use his studio in Carmel after he returned from Mexico. For the next several years Weston continued to earn a living by taking portraits in his small studio which he called "the shack".
Meanwhile, Flora was spending all of her time caring for their children. Their fourth son, Cole Weston (1919–2003), was born on January 30, 1919, and afterward she rarely had time to leave their home.
Over the summer of 1920 Weston met two people who were part of the growing Los Angeles cultural scene: Roubaix de l'Abrie Richey, known as "Robo" and a woman he called his wife, Tina Modotti. Modotti, who was then known only as a stage and film actress, was never married to Robo, but they pretended to be for the sake of his family. Weston and Modotti were immediately attracted to each other, and they soon became lovers. Richey knew of Modotti's affair, but he continued to be friends with Weston and later invited him to come to Mexico and share his studio.Hooks, 50
The following year Weston agreed to allow Mather to become an equal partner in his studio. For several months they took portraits that they signed with both of their names. This was the only time in his long career that Weston shared credit with another photographer.
Sometime in 1920 he began photographing nude models for the first time. His first models were his wife Flora and their children, but soon thereafter he took at least three nude studies of Mather. He followed these with several more photographs of nude models, the first of dozens of figure studies he would make of friends and lovers over the next twenty years.
Until now Weston had kept his relationships with other women a secret from his wife, but as he began to photograph more nudes Flora became suspicious about what went on with him and his models. Chandler recalled that his mother regularly sent him on "errands" to his father's studio and asked him to tell her who was there and what they were doing.Wilson, 59
One of the first who agreed to model nude for Weston was Modotti. She became his primary model for the next several years.
In 1922 he visited his sister May, who had moved to Middletown, Ohio. While there he made five or six photographs of the tall smoke stacks at the nearby Armco steel mill. These images signaled a change in Weston's photographic style, a transition from the soft-focus pictorialism of the past to a new, cleaner-edge style. He immediately recognized the change and later recorded it in his notes: "The Middletown visit was something to remember...most of all in importance was my photographing of 'Armco'...That day I made great photographs, even Stieglitz thought they were important!"Daybooks, I, 8 Weston Naef, former curator of photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum, has praised the "technical virtuosity" of Weston's most successful Armco image (a print of which is owned by the Getty): "The range of grays across that forest of columns has about every gray you can image."Abbott, 106.