Edward Weston: A Legacy

Rating:
Summary: Overdue but worth the wait
Review: Edward Weston gave more that 500 of his favorite works to the Huntington Library. Note books and other written material complete a major collection. This book is a major attempt to organize and say something meaningful about a prolific, private genius. I haven't read it all but I've already learned a lot and I've studied Weston for 40 years. The reproductions and their display as 8X10 contact prints is one of the most astonishing feats of printing I've ever seen, especially the nudes of Charis Wilson and the incredible sand dunes at Oceano. There are many photos that I have never seen, many I have seen and some I've held in my hand. This gives me the perspective to say that this book is worth buying just for the prints. You'll think as I have that you missed something until now, especially if all you've seen is book prints. This is as close you'll come to the real thing in print. I've sat buried in this book for half an hour, afraid to breath.

Rating:
Summary: Overdue but worth the wait
Review: Edward Weston gave more that 500 of his favorite works to the Huntington Library. Note books and other written material complete a major collection. This book is a major attempt to organize and say something meaningful about a prolific, private genius. I haven't read it all but I've already learned a lot and I've studied Weston for 40 years. The reproductions and their display as 8X10 contact prints is one of the most astonishing feats of printing I've ever seen, especially the nudes of Charis Wilson and the incredible sand dunes at Oceano. There are many photos that I have never seen, many I have seen and some I've held in my hand. This gives me the perspective to say that this book is worth buying just for the prints. You'll think as I have that you missed something until now, especially if all you've seen is book prints. This is as close you'll come to the real thing in print. I've sat buried in this book for half an hour, afraid to breath.

Rating:
Summary: An Extraordinary Compilation Of Photography As Art!
Review: Edward Weston, more than any other photographer that I admire and have studied, succeeded in creating photography as art. His abstract and voluptuous landscapes of the human form, his photographic sculptures of organic matter, his special vision that captured unnoticed works of art in nature, bring extraordinary passion and life to black and white photography. His exploration of "the universality of basic form" has provided us with masterpieces of photographic art. Much of Weston's best work is featured in this large and exquisite book. Published in London in association with the Huntington Library, printed and bound in Italy, and issued on fine paper approaching photographic print quality, this book is certainly a wonderful legacy of Edward Weston and his work.

In 1937 and 1938, the Guggenheim Foundation paid Weston to take a two-year photographic trip though California and the West - he was the first photographer to be awarded a Guggenheim fellowship - the images he made during that trip - more than 500, were presented to the Huntington Library. "What it all comes to is this," Weston wrote the Guggenheim Foundation in 1939, "I want very much to have a collection in the Huntington Library and will do anything I can to make it possible." "Edward Weston: A Legacy" organizes much of this material - extensive commentary, notes, biographical information and career-long examples of Weston's photographs. It is a truly stunning compilation.

Weston's work evokes warmth, sensuality, the erotic. There is passion behind his photographs of animals, like the fleet fox, his portraits, and in his strange visions of antique statuary. His nudes, especially the extraordinary work he does with Charis Wilson, take the viewer beyond the erotic to a discovery of eternal forms.

This is a magnificent book containing a master's work - a real treasure!
JANA