Edward Weston Essay.


“Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.”
- Edward Weston


Weston is a world-renowned photographer; his work is easily recognisable for its beauty within the natural form. He began his career working in a pictorialism style, Soft focus prints on platinum paper using Gum-Bicromate, often with noticeable brush marks from where he had made the paper himself.


“Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, and if in a new direction all the betterSuddenly, as if overnight he had changed the direction of his style completely. From a soft focus pictorialist came an extremely detailed realism “Modernist” photographer. He began to think, as did many others did that Pictorialism was a step backward.
From this Weston co-founded the F64 group. A group of seven photographers who shared a common style. Sharp focused and careful composition of natural forms, found objects and the American West.

"The hour is late, the light is failing, and I could not expose another film. So there stands my camera focused, trained like a gun, commanding the shells not to move a hairs breath. And death to anyone who jars out of place what I know shall be a very important negative."
- Edward Weston - The Daybooks

 
This image, being one of his most iconic. The shell is beautifully lit, only using available light, shot against a contrasting background to enhance the shape. Concentrating on form and tone of the object. He used a 10x8 camera only ever printing them contact print size. He believed that the process of photography was one fluid motion. From the studio, to developing the film and making the print. He believed this way he would get a better quality result.

This method is called pre-visualization. Defined as being the act of looking at a scene and imagining what the image will look like in its final format. Taking into account all stages and working “backwards”. The starting point is usually deciding what emotional response you want the image to convey. Then, you can visualize the final image and what you want it to look like. Knowing how you want the final image to look, you can then decide on what materials you will need to produce it; for example, the speed of film, the lens aperture and the type of light. You then determine the best way of editing for that image. Finally is the method of shooting. After taking into account all other things you are ready to think about the position of the camera, the lens, the focus point etc.




This photograph is entitled Iceberg Lake. It is a stunning photograph and almost looks abstract in the way that the mountain is reflecting off the water. His is a very contrasted image with not a lot of tonal variety. I chose this picture to include in my essay because it differs from the shell I had looked at previously. Weston is a very versatile photographer, from nude portraits and abstractions to harsher but equally as beautiful landscapes.





All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know." - Henry Moore


Similar to Weston, Henry Moore focuses on form rather that content. His sculptures are often ambiguous, and abstract, based on the human form in unusual positions, as are Westons nude series. He played a large part in introducing a certain type of Modernism to the UK.


I chose to study Edward Weston because his work has always intrigued me, the way he focused on the beauty within the form and not the content itself was very different to many of the other photographers around this time period. When I discovered his work it really opened my eyes to the possibilities of photography. That such simplicity and ambiguity can be extremely beautiful and be open to individual interpretation