Edward Weston
1886–1958
Introduction
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" 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 "quintessentially American, and especially Californian, approach to modern photography" 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 21. 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.
Wikidata identifier
Q346988
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Accessed April 11, 2024.
Introduction
Noted for innovative photographs of California, Mexico, portraits, industry, and abstract organic forms, including human figures, shells, and plants. Weston took his first photographs with a box camera in 1902. In 1906 he moved to California; was an itinerant portraitist. From 1908 to 1911. He traveled to Mexico, New York City, and Ohio, where he made his first industrial photographs. Weston worked for a commercial portrait studio in Los Angeles, in his own studio in Tropico (now Glendale) California, in Mexico City with Tina Modotti, with his son Brett in San Francisco, in Carmel, California, and in Santa Monica, California. Weston was a co-founder of the Group f/64 in 1932. American photographer.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, owner, painter, photographer
ULAN identifier
500003372
Names
Edward Weston, Edward Henry Weston
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed April 11, 2024.
