CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/18/2015

Edward Weston: The Flame of Recognition

"Two Shells" (1927) is reproduced from Edward Weston: The Flame of Recognition, Aperture's fiftieth anniversary reissue of this classic volume by one of the giants of twentieth-century photography. In a July 25, 1927, entry in his daybook, made in Glendale, California, Weston writes, "I must take time to write about the reactions to my shell prints, as written by Tina [Modotti] from Mexico after showing them to several old acquaintances. First, to quote briefly the most salient remarks. 'My God Edward, your last photographs surely took my breath away. I feel speechless in front of them. What purity of vision. When I opened the package I couldn’t look at them very long, they stirred up all my innermost feelings so that I felt a physical pain… Edward—nothing before in art has affected me like these photographs. I cannot look at them long without feeling exceedingly perturbed, they disturb me not only mentally but physically. There is something so pure and at the same time so perverse about them. They contain both the innocence of natural things and the morbidity of a sophisticated, distorted mind. They make me think of lilies and embryos. They are mystical and erotic…'"