Part of our Masters of Photography series.
These Underwater Nudes were taken by Brett Weston in the late 1970s and early 1980s
If you like the work of Brett Weston, be sure to check our other tributes: we love the photography by
Lucien Clergue, Jeanloup Sieff, Fernand Fonssagrives and Ruth Bernhard.
Lucien Clergue, Jeanloup Sieff, Fernand Fonssagrives and Ruth Bernhard.
In 1925, long before photography was accepted
as a ‘legitimate’ art form, Brett Weston embarked upon
a remarkable career in fine art photography that would
span nearly seven decades. The fourteen year-old Brett began his
legendary abstraction of
form in Mexico under the astonished eye of his father,
the great
photographer Edward Weston. Edward would often privately
credit Brett
with influencing his own work after that date. As some
musicians
are said to be born with an ear independent of their
experience
and training, Brett had been gifted with an ‘eye’ that
is recognizable from his earliest work. Edward Weston
observed
that by the age of 14, Brett was doing better work than
he was
doing himself at 30. In time, they would become
photographic colleagues,
with Brett not only at the wheel during camera trips
(Edward never
learned to drive) but also encouraging Edward to shed
the older
platinum papers in favor of richer tones available in
silver halide
and doing much of their joint studio darkroom work. By
the amazing
age of 17, Brett Weston’s work was being exhibited
internationally
and he had his first one-man museum show at the de Young
in San Francisco at barely 21 before the renowned Group f64 - and the
world had a glimpse of what was to come. The Curator of
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Van Deren Coke
would later
observe, "Brett Weston was the child genius of American
photography."
Brett Weston’s work would ultimately became one of the defining
poles of contemporary photography with its technical precision,
bold design and extremes of abstraction and private imagination.
The excitement and tension in his prints were Brett’s unique
response to pure form: the vocabulary of line, volume, pattern
and light and dark. It was this sensual response to form that
defines his more classical European landscapes, taken in the 1960’s
and 1970’s. A world away from the endless California horizons
and soaring cliffs, these scenes from abroad feature beautifully
modulated light and confined landscapes born from Weston’s
expert technical command of the West Coast tradition of photography.
In Weston’s concluding photographs taken during the 1980’s,
the abstract was resurrected but this time the playful and less
orderly images of writhing reflections in skyscraper windows and
the electrifying patterns of light on underwater figures captured
his imagination. A final series of plant forms in Hawaii revealed
a more mature language; as a sense of mortality and introspection
entered the frame. It was as if Weston had begun to contemplate
the limits of the ego, or of reason, still affirming the self,
but with more awareness of death and chaos. But true to only himself,
these images are often punctuated with elements of humor, and
more irrational elements of design.
Brett Weston’s lifetime of devotion and total
involvement
with the medium produced a body of work and contribution
to photography
that ultimately surpassed his renowned father in
sophisticated visual scope. Brett worked quietly more than three decades
after Edward Weston's death to "take the work as far as I can" and
brilliantly conclude the remarkable 90-year Weston Legacy (1903-1993).
Brett Weston's intuitive visual genius has virtually no equal in
the history of contemporary photography.
Underwater Nudes by Brett Weston
If you like Brett Westons work this is a must have book:
