Portrait of James Cagney, 1933. Platinum silver print. Oakland Museum Founders Fund.

The Oakland Museum of California presents Edward Weston: Masterworks from the Collection, an exhibition of 58 photographs by one of the world’s major figures in photography. The exhibition spans Weston’s career from his early, soft-focus images in the Pictorialist style from the early 1920s, through his landmark work with Group f.64 and his later, darker images from Point Lobos. The show runs January 7 through August 6, 2006.

“ In his era Weston was more highly regarded than Ansel Adams, and he remains a role model today,” said Curator of Photography Drew Johnson. “He was among the first Californians to embrace Modernism in photography. He lived and worked with absolute single-mindedness and dedication to a very developed and thought-out vision.

“ But most of all, though, it's the work,” said Johnson. “Taken together it is a towering accomplishment. There were (and are) lots of Weston imitators, but they all lack the spark. The most generic Weston still life, landscape, or nude is recognizable as a Weston by virtue of its unity, technical accomplishment, and relation to his other work.”

Edward Weston: Masterworks from the Collection is divided into thematic sections: Early Work (Pictorialism) and Mexico; Point Lobos and the Coast; Portraits; Still Lifes; Nudes; and Landscapes. Portraits of Weston by colleagues Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, and Beaumont Newhall are included. A selection of Weston’s letters, portfolio cases, and early books and magazines containing his photographs provide an artistic and cultural context for Weston’s work.

Edward Weston (1886-1958) was born in Highland Park, Illinois, and began to photograph with a Kodak Bulls-Eye #2 camera at age 16. He visited California after the 1906 earthquake and stayed to do survey photography for the railroads. After attending the Illinois College of Photography (1908-1911), Weston worked as a portrait photographer in Los Angeles and Glendale, prospering from his highly stylized, atmospheric images. He and his wife, Flora, had four sons, including two who became photographers—Brett and Cole.

In 1923 Weston had a solo exhibition in Mexico City, and moved there with his companion, photographer Tina Modotti, and his son Brett. A restless man, Weston became dissatisfied with his work, renounced Pictorialism, and began to experiment with light and camera angles. His work became sharper and more hard-edged. Returning to California for good in 1926, he continued his interest in natural-form close-ups, nudes, and landscapes.

Divorced from Flora, broke but confident of his new direction, Weston moved to Carmel in 1929. The raw beauty of Point Lobos was an inspiration, and the following two decades were among the most productive of Weston’s life. He and

Bathing Pool, 1919. Platinum print. Gift of the Bell Fund.

colleagues Imogen Cunningham, Consuelo Kanaga, Adams, and Willard Van Dyke, among the founders of Group f.64, presented their work at the de Young Museum in 1932. Its precision and clarity established the inevitability of modern photography.

Some of Weston’s signature work includes his nudes and his studies of shells and vegetables. His eye could render a green pepper or the cross-section of an artichoke sensuous. His romantic and professionally symbiotic relationships with artists Modotti, Margrethe Mather, Sonya Noskowiak, and Charis Wilson Weston all had bearing on his life and work.

Stricken with Parkinson’s disease in 1946, Weston took his last photograph in 1948, at Point Lobos. During his final decade he supervised the printing by sons Brett and Cole of his life’s work. His Fiftieth Anniversary Portfolio was published on 1952.

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