Edward Weston: The Flame of Recognition

This classic monograph, first issued as a hardcover in 1965, began its life in 1958 as a monographic issue of Aperture magazine published in celebration of Weston's life. Drawing on a decades-long collaboration between the photographer and Nancy Newhall, Aperture cofounder and early MoMA curator, this volume brings together a sequence of images and excerpts from Weston's writing in an effort to channel the photographer's creativity and, in his own words, "present clearly my feeling for life with photographic beauty…without subterfuge or evasion in spirit or technique." Now, 50 years later, Aperture presents a reissue of this volume, which covers the range of Weston's greatest works, from the portraits and nudes to the landscapes and still-lifes. Accompanying and amplifying the images are Weston's own thoughts, excerpted from his now-famed daybooks and letters. Others who contributed to the making of the book include two of the artist's sons, Brett and Cole, and two other Aperture cofounders, filmmaker and author Dody Warren Weston and Ansel Adams, whose preface offers a posthumous tribute to the oeuvre of a remarkable artist. A brief bibliography as well as a chronology offer further insight into the life and work of this giant of twentieth-century photography.