Edward Weston: fifty years

New York: Aperture, Inc, 1973. First edition. Hardcover. Oblong folio. 284 pp. Green cloth with black cloth spine, silver lettering on front cover and spine in original decorative dj. Entire work is filled from cover to cover with striking b/w facsimile photographs of individuals, nudes, landscapes, Mayan and Aztec monuments, animals, picturesque Victorian buildings flanked by classic automobiles, rare sculptures and much, much more. DJ with light wear along edges and light age toning. Light curved 8 inch mark on front cover. DJ, binding and interior in very good condition.

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Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 - January 1, 1958) was an American photographer, and cofounder of Group f/64. Most of his work was done using an 8 by 10 inch view camera. Edward Henry Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois on March 24, 1886. In 1902, he received his first camera for his 16th birthday, a Kodak Bull's-Eye #2, and began taking photographs in Chicago parks and at his aunt's farm. He met with quick success and the Chicago Art Institute exhibited his photographs a year later, in 1903. In 1906, Weston moved to California, where he decided to stay and pursue a career in photography. 1922 marked a period of transition for Weston. He renounced pictorialism in favor of straight photography, a move that would later make him known as the "pioneer of precise and sharp presentation" with images of natural forms such as the human figure, seashells, plants, and landscapes. He began regular visits to Mexico, where a number of the photographs in this work were taken from. After 1927, Weston worked mainly with nudes, still life - his shells and vegetable studies were especially important as well as landscape subjects. After a few exhibitions of his works in New York, he confounded “Group f/64” in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke and others. The term f/64 referred to the smallest aperture setting on a large format camera, which secured maximum depth of field, making the photograph appear evenly sharp from foreground to background. This corresponded to the philosophy of straight photography that the group espoused in response to the pictorialist methods that were still in fashion at the time.