Artist's
Biography (1886 - 1958)
Edward Weston, an American
photographer was born in Highland Park, Illinois.
Weston began to make photographs in Chicago
parks in 1902, and his works were first exhibited
in 1903 at the Art Institute of Chicago. Three
years later he moved to California and opened
a portrait studio in a Los Angeles suburb.
The Western landscape soon became his principal
subject matter. In the 1930s, Weston and several
other photographers, including Ansel Adams,
Imogen Cunningham, and Willard van Dyke, formed
the f/64 group, which greatly influenced the
aesthetics of American photography. In 1937,
Weston received the first Guggenheim Fellowship
awarded to a photographer, which freed him
from earning a living as a portraitist. The
works for which he is famous–sharp, stark,
brilliantly printed images of sand dunes,
nudes, vegetables, rock formations, trees,
cacti, shells, water, and human faces are
among the finest of 20th-century photographs;
their influence on modern art remains inestimable.
Weston made his last photographs at his beloved
Point Lobos, Calif., during the decade from
1938 to 1948, the year he was stricken with
Parkinson's disease. His second son, Brett
Weston, 1911-93, and his fourth son, Cole
Weston, 1919-2003, were both photographers
in their father's tradition. |
