Edward Weston: Portraits

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 :
Edward Weston was born March 24, 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. He made his first photographs in 1902 with a Kodak Bull's Eye #2 camera-- a gift from his father. In 1911, five years after moving to California, he opened his own portrait studio in Tropico (now Glendale), California, and began to earn an international reputation for his work. But it was not until 1922 that he came fully into his own as an artist, with his photographs of the Armco Steel mill in Ohio. During 1923-26 he worked in Mexico and in California, where he lived with his sons, Chandler, Brett, Neil, and Cole. Though he continued to support himself with portrait work, Weston turned increasingly to subjects of his own choosing, such as nudes, clouds, and close-ups of rocks, trees, vegetables, and shells. During 1937-39, on a Guggenheim Fellowship, he traveled and photographed throughout the American West. Three years later, he toured the South and East, taking photographs for a limited edition of Whitman's "Leaves of Grass, until the attack on Pearl Harbor cutshort his journey. In 1948 Weston made his last photograph; he had been stricken with Parkinson's disease several years earlier. On January 1, 1958, he died at Wildcat Hill, his home in Carmel, California. Susan Morgan, Distinguished Professor of English at Miami University, is the author of "Place Matters: Gendered Geography in Victorian Women's Travel Writings about Southeast Asia, among other books. Cole Weston's work has been exhibited and collected by museums throughout the United States and Europe. Weston lives with his wife in Carmel, California. Paul wolf is managing editor of The Carmel Pinecone.

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" "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