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Edward Weston

Artist (American, 1908 - 1993)
Printer (American, born 1951)
Date1940 (printed 1983)
Mediumgelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 13 3/8 × 10 1/4 in. (34 × 26 cm)
Support: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
Mat: 22 × 18 in. (55.9 × 45.7 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of Gil and Eileen Hitchcock, 2015
Object number2015.24.4
DescriptionBlocky, rustic wood building dominates the picture with foreground of iris leaves and vegetation, a climbing plant, and a trellis. In the background are pine trees and other vegetation. At upper left of building, photographer Edward Weston is visible in a square window with a hinged cover/door, with his hands on the sill.
Text Entries
Photographer and photo-historian Beaumont Newhall made this portrait of his friend Edward Weston in 1940, when he visited him at home on Wildcat Hill in Carmel, California. After photographing with Weston at nearby Point Lobos, Newhall felt his pictures there were too influenced by Weston. He decided to tackle a fresh subject, instead: Weston’s house. Among the images he made were Weston’s coffee grinder and kitchen, along with this portrait of the artist looking out of the window in his darkroom.
See also 3969.23PH, another print of this image that was part of the “New Mexico Portfolio” published by the Center of the Eye Photography Collaborative in 1976.

 

Photographer and photo-historian Beaumont Newhall visited Edward Weston and Charis Wilson in 1940 at their home and darkroom on Wildcat Hill in Carmel, California, in 1940. Weston took Newhall to Point Lobos to photograph and Newhall writes that he found himself photographing like Weston and so decided to photograph Weston’s home because no one had done that before. This portrait joins several other pictures, including one of Weston’s coffee grinder, kitchen (see 1985.413.1), and Charis’ typewriter, that he made on that visit.

 

See “In Plain Sight: The Photographs of Beaumont Newhall,” (Gibbs M. Smith, 1983) for images and text by Newhall: ”On my 1940 visit with Edward Weston in Carmel, I had not anticipated that I would learn so much from him in a few days. He taught by quiet example. At Point Lobos he invited me to look at the images on the ground glass of his tripod-based camera after he had made the exposures. He offered me the use of his darkroom to develop what I had photographed. I found that unwittingly my images were faint echoes of his, so strong was his influence. And so I decided to photograph what seemed not to have been photographed before – the house on Wildcat Hill where he and his wife Charis lived. I chose evocative subjects.” (p. 40).
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