Often overlooked—until now—Weston's early photography is painterly and luscious
This is a book about Edward Weston before he was Edward Weston—before he was the renowned modernist photographer we know so well. His early years in the field coincided exactly with the height of the Pictorialist movement in America, and while he was never a typical practitioner, he did make photographs that borrowed themes from paintings and other media, and experimented with soft-focused imagery that sometimes looks more like graphite drawings or inky dark prints than photographs. He would later disavow the gauzy, painterly experiments of his early years, claiming in his Daybooks that “even as I made the soft ‘artistic’ work … I would secretly admire sharp, clean, technically perfect photographs.”
Introducing rare surviving prints from the unplumbed holdings of the Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this book offers new insights into Weston’s working methods and his evolution as a photographer. By taking a longer and more nuanced view of his early years, and by reinserting his first experiments back into the larger story of his artistic production, it reveals the variety of ways in which the paths he took as a young man led him to become the mature modernist master. Beautifully reproduced examples of Weston’s most important early work, essays explaining its place in his oeuvre and the history of photography, and a section dedicated to the variety of Weston’s early materials and techniques make this book a must-have resource.
"Head of an Italian Girl" (1921) is reproduced from 'Edward Weston: The Early Years.'
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Gorgeously printed on thick and creamy matte paper, MFA Publications' new release, Edward Weston: The Early Years, presents 115 early photographs—including rare surviving prints from the unplumbed holdings of the Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—that are as unexpectedly painterly as they are romantic. Ultimately rejected by Weston in favor of his mature Modernist work, these photographs are nevertheless experimental and revelatory. Featured photograph, of Weston's son Chandler, is titled "I Do Believe in Fairies" (1913). "Every child is the very embodiment of unconscious natural grace," Weston wrote in 1912, "and to try to pose children is a farce." continue to blog
"[The sitter] is engaged by Weston; and before the visitor is aware, he is sitting in the skylit room in a big chair, answering Weston's questions as to his likes and dislikes. He talks carelessly and entirely at ease, waiting, as he believes, for Weston to finish preparing the big camera, around which he hovers. When the sitter has begun to get nervous again, thinking that it is time to arrange his necktie and features once more, Weston quietly asks him to move his chair over a bit, into the ray of sunlight. He is not quite satisfied with the first six plates he has taken. Then the visitor realizes that, instead of hovering over the camera, Weston has been caressing it and coaxing from it the highest form of picture art." —American Magazine, 1915 continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 11 in. / 192 pgs / 115 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 GBP £40.00 ISBN: 9780878468508 PUBLISHER: MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston AVAILABLE: 6/19/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Text by Karen E. Haas, Margaret Wessling.
Often overlooked—until now—Weston's early photography is painterly and luscious
This is a book about Edward Weston before he was Edward Weston—before he was the renowned modernist photographer we know so well. His early years in the field coincided exactly with the height of the Pictorialist movement in America, and while he was never a typical practitioner, he did make photographs that borrowed themes from paintings and other media, and experimented with soft-focused imagery that sometimes looks more like graphite drawings or inky dark prints than photographs. He would later disavow the gauzy, painterly experiments of his early years, claiming in his Daybooks that “even as I made the soft ‘artistic’ work … I would secretly admire sharp, clean, technically perfect photographs.”
Introducing rare surviving prints from the unplumbed holdings of the Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this book offers new insights into Weston’s working methods and his evolution as a photographer. By taking a longer and more nuanced view of his early years, and by reinserting his first experiments back into the larger story of his artistic production, it reveals the variety of ways in which the paths he took as a young man led him to become the mature modernist master. Beautifully reproduced examples of Weston’s most important early work, essays explaining its place in his oeuvre and the history of photography, and a section dedicated to the variety of Weston’s early materials and techniques make this book a must-have resource.
