Edward Weston

Which art books, prints and posters are available by and about this artist? Here is a sample of items of interest to a typical collector:

Book images

The Art of Edward Weston

New York, E. Weyhe

1932

with:

Edition:

First

Edition size:

Author's copy in an edition of 550

Signed

Out of Print

Other edition(s):

Hardcover, 34.3 x 26.7 cm

ISBN:

Condition: Good.

The Art of Edward Weston

1932

New York, E. Weyhe

‍

Out of Print

Signed

Edition:

First

Prior edition(s):

Hardcover, 34.3 x 26.7 cm

Condition: Good.

Book images

My Camera on Point Lobos

1950

with:

Edition:

1st

Edition size:

Signed by Dody Weston Thompson, Ed Weston's daughter-in-law and Brett Weston's wife.

Out of Print

Other edition(s):

Spiral-bound

ISBN:

Condition: Very Good without DJ (very few copies have the DJ)

By the late 1920s Weston had left behind the soft-focus pictorialism of his early career and settled near Point Lobos, the rocky headland south of Carmel, California whose wind-bent cypress, kelp beds, and tide pools became the central subject of his last two decades of work. This volume gathers thirty duotone plates made there between 1929 and 1948, interleaved with excerpts from Weston's own daybooks, giving the book the feel of a first-person account of how he actually worked the place, plate by plate.

The book was the second in a short run of oversized, spiral-bound photographic folios produced by Virginia Adams (Ansel Adams's wife and publishing partner) with Houghton Mifflin, following Ansel Adams's own My Camera in Yosemite Valley (1949). The format, large duotone plates on glossy stock, minimal typography, spiral-bound so the pages would lie flat, was built to let the photographs carry the book with as little interference as possible.

The introduction is by Dody Weston (later Dody Weston Thompson), who was Weston's studio assistant in these years before marrying his son Brett. Ansel Adams closes the book with "A Note on the Photographs," praising Weston's ability to achieve extraordinary power through directness and an almost total absence of darkroom manipulation, the straight-photography ethic both men had championed since co-founding Group f/64 in 1932. By the time of publication Weston had already stopped photographing, so the book stands as one of the first retrospective statements on his Point Lobos work made while he was still alive to see it.

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My Camera on Point Lobos

1950

Out of Print

Signed

Edition:

1st

Prior edition(s):

Spiral-bound

Condition: Very Good without DJ (very few copies have the DJ)

Print images

Icon used when no picture of the print is available

Edward Weston

or applicable right holders.

Carmel, CA, Dancer's Knees, Nude, 1927

Edition:

Uneditioned

Printed and signed by Cole Weston on the verso.

Year of work:

1927

Image size:

18 x 20.5 cm

Print size:

32.7 x 39.5 cm

Printed in

Framed size:

40.8 x 51 cm matted

Provenance:

Cole Weston

Gelatin silver print

Condition:

Very good.

Literature and Collections:

The model for this famous series was dancer Bertha Wardell. Weston approached the human form with the same sculptural, formalist rigor he applied to his famed peppers, shells, and rock formations. By tightly cropping the composition to focus on the geometric lines, taut muscles, and contours of the knees and torso, he transformed the anatomical study into an abstract architectural structure.

Created in 1927, this work represents a pivotal period in Weston’s career when he fully abandoned pictorialism (soft-focus, painterly photography) in favor of "straight photography", sharp focus, full tonal range, and an emphasis on formal structure and texture.

The negative was exposed by Edward Weston in 1927, and this specific piece is a modern/posthumous print produced by his son, Cole Weston, likely in the 1970s.

As designated in Edward Weston's will, Cole was authorized to print from his father's original glass-plate and film negatives using classic gelatin silver processing. Cole signed these prints on the reverse to distinguish them from lifetime prints made by Edward himself or earlier authorized prints made by Brett Weston.

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Carmel, CA, Dancer's Knees, Nude, 1927

Icon to idincate that no image of the print is available

Edward Weston

or applicable right holders.

edition:

Uneditioned

Sold Out

Printed and signed by Cole Weston on the verso.

Image size:

18 x 20.5 cm

Year of work:

1927

No items found.

Edward Weston, American (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958)

Weston was a pioneering American photographer widely regarded as one of the most innovative and influential masters of 20th-century modernism. Over a prolific 40-year career, Weston redefined the artistic potential of the medium, moving photography away from painterly imitation toward a sharp-focused, highly composed aesthetic that celebrated the natural forms of the American West.

Born in Highland Park, Illinois, Weston spent most of his youth in Chicago. His lifelong obsession with photography began at age 16 when his father gifted him a Bull's Eye #2 camera. He initially captured Chicago's parks and his aunt's farm before relocating to California in 1906. After a brief stint working as an itinerant door-to-door photographer, he returned east to formally attend the Illinois College of Photography. By 1911, he opened his own commercial portrait studio in Tropico (now Glendale), California, where he earned a strong reputation for his soft-focus, Pictorialist style.

By the early 1920s, Weston grew deeply dissatisfied with Pictorialism, seeking an unembellished, purist style that reflected modern life. A critical turning point occurred during his travels to Mexico (1923–1926), where he was heavily inspired by the bold, simplified forms of muralists like Diego Rivera and Jose Orozco.

Upon returning to California, Weston cemented his signature style: highly detailed, sharply focused, large-format imagery. In 1932, alongside Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Willard Van Dyke, he co-founded Group f/64. The group championed "straight photography", images printed from unmanipulated negatives that leveraged maximum depth of field and ultimate visual clarity.

Weston treated ordinary objects with an intense aesthetic rigor that transformed them into abstract, almost sensual sculptures. His most notable portfolios include:

Still Lifes: Unforgettable, close-up studies of vegetables and natural items, most famously Pepper #30 (1930) and his highly geometric cabbage leaves.
Nudes and Portraits: Sculptist, abstract captures of the human form.
Landscapes: Expansive, sweeping views of the American West and Southwest, with a particular fondness for the wind-swept sand dunes of Oceano and the dramatic coastlines of Point Lobos State Park.

In 1937, Weston became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for experimental work, using the funds to travel and photograph extensively across the American West. He later provided the photographic illustrations for a special edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1941.

Weston began experiencing symptoms of Parkinson's disease in the mid-1940s and was forced to snap his final photograph at Point Lobos in 1948. Unable to operate a camera, he spent the last decade of his life at his home on Wildcat Hill in Carmel, California, meticulously supervising his sons, Brett and Cole Weston, as they printed his life's masterwork negatives. Weston passed away on New Year's Day in 1958, leaving behind his extensively published personal journals, known as the Daybooks, which remain seminal literature on the photographic craft.

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