Charis Wilson, model, muse, and wife of photographer Edward Weston, died on November 20 at the age of 95. Wilson, who met Weston was she was 19 and he was in his late 40s, began posing for him. “After eight months we are closer together than ever,” Weston wrote in his diary in 1934. “Perhaps C. will be remembered as the great love of my life. Already I have reached certain heights reached with no other love.” The couple married several years later and remained together until their divorce in 1946. Many of Weston’s most memorable photographs—including a nude with her head bowed and her limbs entwined—are of Wilson. Much of her later years were spent writing and lecturing about Weston—her memoir, Through Another Lens, was published in 1999, and in 2007 she appeared in a documentary, Eloquent Nude.

The Daily Beast

Also check out this article on A Photo Editor: Interview with Edward Westons Wife and Muse, Charis Wilson

Landscape photography is a genre intended to show different spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic.

Many landscape photographers show little or no human activity in their photos, striving to attain pure, unsullied landscapes that are devoid of human influence, using instead subjects such as strongly defined landforms, weather, and ambient light. Despite this, there is no pure or absolute definition of what makes a landscape in photography, as such it has become a very broad term, encompassing urban, industrial, macro and nature photography. A beach full of parasols and sunbathers can be a landscape photo, but so can the view through an electron microscope, which shows a different type of landscape. Waterfalls, and mountains are especially popular in classic landscape photography, often calling for Large Format cameras and neutral density or polarizing filters. Though many photographs are inspired by traditional landscape painting, the term in photography is very broad, most places and things can be photographed as a landscape, a kitchen, a lamp, a wall, or even the human body can be turned into a rolling vista by a skilled photographer.

Landscapes are often created with such tools as a pinhole camera, or a large format camera and tripod, usually with a wide angle lenses (24 mm and 35 mm are especially popular). Many serious photographers use medium or large format systems to record as much detail as possible, although the vast majority of landscapes shot today are from digital SLRs and compact cameras.

Landscape photography has become a valuable tool to inspire environmental stewardship. Capturing the beauty of unspoiled places serves to bring dwindling wilderness areas into the public eye. Many noted landscape photographers provide images to environmental protection organizations. Noted organizations use professional and amateur photographers’ work to further the preservation cause. Notable landscape photographers include Ansel Adams, Bill Brandt, and Edward Weston.

wikipedia.org

Charis Wilson met Weston when she was 16 and he was 45. She became his model, his lover and eventually his wife until their divorce in 1946.

She is the image we often think of when we think of Weston’s pictures of people in the years when he was really discovered as an artist. Wilson herself was a writer, a teacher and a labor union activist who married Noel Harris (also a union activist) after her divorce from Weston.

As to her modeling for Weston, she said later in her life:

“I knew I really didn’t look that good, and that Edward had glorified me, but it was a very pleasant thing to be glorified and I couldn’t wait to go back for more.”

Charis Wilson se ne è andata a 95 anni. Dopo averci lasciato gli scatti indimenticabili di Edward Weston (non solo di nudo) e la sua personalissima testimonianza, prima nel libro Through Another Lens, poi nelle struggenti interviste del film Eloquent Nude.

Per la cronaca 1: Il New York Times la ricorda così.

Per la cronaca 2: Il libro della Wilson Through another lens si trova abbastanza facilmente d’occasione su Ebay o su Amazon, basta starci un po’ dietro.

Per la cronaca 3: Il documentario Eloquent Nude si può ordinare dalla casa produttrice oppure da Ebay. Sul sito si trovano dei significativi estratti, sia delle riprese che delle straordinarie interviste alla anzianissima ma lucidissima Wilson.

Per la cronaca 4: Sul sito Weston Photography (gestito dagli eredi del fotografo) si trovano foto classiche e recenti di Charis Wilson.

Per la cronaca 5: sullo stesso sito ci sono alcune gallerie fotografiche dei lavori di Weston.

Per la cronaca 6: Si era parlato su queste pagine qualche tempo fa di Weston e della Wilson. Il post è qui.

Per la cronaca 7: La pronuncia inglese riserva sempre delle sorprese. Infatti per imperscrutabili motivi, non si dice Ciaris, ma Caris.

Naturalists of the 18th and 19th Century sought to record what they saw with drawings and paintings of great detail and precision. Although the accompanying text or title plate would contain information there was often nothing else within the image which gave any immediate reference to scale. Joseph Banks and Ernst Haeckel provided rich source material for this type of work. In photography the works of Karl Blossfeldt followed a similar pattern, seemingly drawing inspiration from this cataloguing of plants.

In the 2oth Century the work of Edward Weston, in particular his natural studies, again seemed to play with the notions of scale and the sometimes abstract qualities of nature when photographed against a neutral background, and without context. Having noted that Blossfeldt appeared to have taken the majority of his photographs in weak natural light, the small world images were my attempt to undertake something similar, using only the early morning light coming through my loft windows…

Small World II. Image copyright John Callaway (2009)

Here’s a link to another image from the series

http://www.edward-weston.com/

Edward Weston (Highland Park, Illinois, 24 marzo 1886 – Wildcat Hill, California, 1º gennaio 1958) è stato un fotografo statunitense, tra i più importanti della prima metà del ‘900.

Lavorò molto in California e fu invitato al Salon of Photography di Londra.

Nel 1920 Weston fece una revisione dei propri lavori, nei quali fino a quel momento aveva prevalso l’uso dell’effetto flou, lo sfocato artistico.

Dal 1923 al 1926 lavorò in Messico accanto a Tina Modotti e fece amicizia con alcune personalità del Rinascimento messicano. Fu questo un periodo in cui ritrovò se stesso e la sua strada stilistica iniziò a mutare. Era convinto che la fotografia servisse per catturare la vita e sotto qualunque forma essa si presentasse, l’unico modo possibile per farlo era attraverso il realismo.

Nel 1932 insieme ad altri fotografi, tra cui Ansel Adams, fondò il Gruppo f/64 (chiamato così perché in genere usavano l’apertura minima di diaframma degli obiettivi che impiegavano per ottenere la massima profondità di campo). Questo gruppo di fotografi fondò un’estetica che si basava sulla ‘”perfezione tecnica e stilistica”: qualunque foto non perfettamente a fuoco, o perfettamente stampata, o montata su cartoncino bianco era “impura”. Si trattava di una reazione violenta allo stile sdolcinato e sentimentale che in quegli anni aveva reso celebri i fotografi pittorici della California.

L’aspetto principale della visione di Weston fu il suo insistere continuamente sul fatto che il fotografo doveva già “visualizzare la foto dentro di sé prima ancora di scattarla”.

Nel 1946 Edward Weston iniziò a soffrire di Parkinson e nel 1948 scattò la sua ultima fotografia a Point Lobos. Morì il 1º gennaio 1958.

Took another gander at the Smithsonian Museum of American History’s archive last week with curator Shannon Thomas Perich who kindly showed me some early and dear Edward Weston’s.  At first I poo-pooed as I had no desire to see more sand dunes or shells, or green peppers, but reader, why one should always just shut-up and listen as a garden of delights was placed before my unworthy eyes.

When one thinks of Edward W., environmental portraiture does not come to mind.  But before Weston examined the nekkid human figure and it’s doppelganger, the green pepper, he was creating beautiful portraits, beginning the process of abstraction that would later define some of his best work, and making luminous palladium prints.  Staring at these beauties, which I do no justice in recreating, was akin to me to the experience of some upon sitting in a Rothko chapel.  Breathtaking.

© Edward Weston

I believe this portrait is of Margrethe Mather.  Mather was associated with Edward Weston. They were close companions who collaborated on many photographs. His fame continues to overshadow Mather’s considerable work from the period of their collaboration and afterwards. Mather and Weston met in 1913 and worked together until he departed for Mexico in 1923 with Tina Modotti. The photographs Mather made, both alone and in collaboration with Weston, helped set the stage for the shift from pictorialism (softly focused images giving the photograph a romantic quality) to modernity. Many of her photographs were more experimental than those being produced by her contemporaries.

© Edward Weston

They found this great attic and exploited its chapel like lines.  I could do perhaps the same thing in miniature in my Ikea pantry. Sigh.

© Edward Weston

Reminds me of the Odalisque, supine but not enslaved.

© Edward Weston

First train out of pictorialism, and heading towards abstraction. Go man go!

© Edward Weston

Back in the chapel/attic.

Shannon believes that Sothebys recently sold the only other print existing of this portrait of Tina Moddotti for a million washingtons.  I was careful not to sneeze (or drool, as more likely the scenario). No that mark on her pit is not from me.

© Edward Weston

This might be Margrethe again.

© Edward Weston

I was duly chastised by aforementioned curator when I called this picture “cute.”

© Margrethe Mather

Margrethe’s own work.  I am looking for her biography right now, I am interested in those who are lost in the passage of time.  Perhaps envisioning my own future?

And tucked away in a lone corner I found him. Our father, Louis Daguerre himself.  It was all I could do to refrain from sticking him in pocketbook and bolting out the door.

Gazing on these prints makes me feel totally inadequate.  There are all different ways to evaluate a work, but for whatever reason, when I see these prints, I don’t care who made them, they are beautiful, tonal, soft, textural and soulful.  I want to burn my inkjet printer (causing even greater environmental damage alas), destroy all my color negatives and start anew.  I am not worthy. Photoshop is not worthy.

Oh well. Tomorrow is another day.

PS Did you know that the Smithsonian Museum of American History is our country’s oldest photographic archive? I did not.

If you greatly admire many of

Edward Weston’s photographs

– as I do – and if you find them

aesthetically majestic, recognize

their substantial influence and

their high status in contemporary

criticism, you may turn to the

photographer’s writings in an

effort to discover his intentions,

his philosophies, perhaps even his secrets.

Expect complexity.

Estelle Jussim

(1927 – 2004)

Art Historian, Communications Theorist

This link gives you a little more info on Estelle,

 as well as listing a few of the books she’d written:

#mce_temp_url#

For a full list of books, try a search engine such as BookFinder.com:

#mce_temp_url#

di Simona Maggiorelli

Tina Modotti,Bandolier, Corn, Sickle, 1927

La vera storia di Tina Modotti deve ancora essere scritta. Nonostante le molte autorevoli biografie (in primis quella di  Pino Cacucci Tina, Feltrinelli) e i film che le sono stati dedicati.

Nata nel 1896 in una famiglia numerosa e povera di Udine, Tina fu, forse, giovanissima prostituta, poi operaia, teatrante dalla forte carica espressiva e, una volta sbarcata Oltreoceano in cerca di fortuna, attrice del cinema muto. Ma a Hollywood le parti da odalisca e femme fatale ,che le assegnavano per la sua straordinaria bellezza e lo sguardo malinconico, la stufarono presto. Si sentiva chiusa in una scatola. E come tante volte poi farà nella vita, si rimise in cerca. «Aveva una grande sete di conoscere, di sapere, di imparare», diceva di lei il fotografo Edward Weston che diventò il suo amante e la introdusse ai segreti della Graflex.

Ma entrando in contatto con i muralisti messicani e, a Città del Messico, frequentando Diego Rivera e i poeti del movimento estridentista, Tina maturò una forte passione politica. Impegno civile, militanza nelle file del partito comunista messicano, lavoro nella redazione di El Machete e al contempo l’esigenza profonda di trovare una propria cifra espressiva, originale. In questo esplosivo mix Tina Modotti, nell’arco di poco tempo divenne una delle più sensibili fotografe del primo Novecento, regalando alle sue opere un’intensità drammatica e poetica che ha pochi eguali.

Fra i campesinos e i rivoluzionari, i suoi scatti hanno il respiro di un epos potente, calmo, antiretorico. Semplici primi piani di mani di lavoratori, bambini al seno della madre, campi assolati in cui sabbia arida e sassi si trasformano in elementi di un paesaggio vivente e umano, un mare di sombreri nelle riunioni politiche in una piazza dalla forte carica pittorica. Dalle pareti della galleria Photology a Milano, dove fino al 13 novembre è aperta la mostra Sotto il cielo del Messico, e dal catalogo Photology (con testi di Cacucci) le stampe di Tina Modotti oggi ci vengono incontro, con penetrante immediatezza e autenticità. Con un calore che sembra mancare ai raffinatissimi scatti di Weston. Rifiutando l’euforia meccanicistica che la fotografia più progressista conobbe in Europa negli anni Venti e negli Stati Uniti un decennio dopo, Weston e Tina non avevano fatto della nitidezza delle immagini e dell’esattezza il proprio credo. In quegli anni i dettami della nuova oggettività europea imponevano che la registrazione dei fatti fosse esattissima. Mentre i costruttivisti che sposarono la rivoluzione rifiutavano l’opera d’arte individuale, «capitalista» per un’arte collettiva e popolare.

Tina Modotti

E perfino il filosofo Walter Benjamin arrivò a dire che «la creatività della fotografia è la sua abdicazione alla moda dell’espressività». E’ una strada di ricerca completamente diversa, invece, quella che sceglie l’irrequieta Tina Modotti, che passa da un amore all’altro, fedele solo al desiderio, e intanto si butta a capofitto nell’impegno politico e nell’arte. E mentre Edward Weston, dopo la separazione da lei, si darà a raffreddati esercizi formali, ritraendo nudi femminili come forme naturali, fiori e conchiglie, Tina cerca ancora di far risuonare il suo cuore nei ritratti. Stagliato contro il cielo, il profilo del rivoluzionario cubano Julio Antonio Mella è uno dei più intensi di questi anni. Ma dopo la pallottola stalinista che lo freddò mentre le camminava accanto, Tina cominciò a vacillare. E’ la fine di un grande amore e insieme il crollo di un grande ideale. Nel 1942, dopo vari anni spesi a lavorare oltre la cortina di ferro, Tina Modotti fu trovata morta in un tax a Città del Messico. I veleni della Russia stalinista, da cui aveva sperato di poter scappare, erano riusciti  a raggiungerla e a spezzarla.

da Left-Avvenimenti

Here’s one of the first portraits I took when I got to Chiapas back in 1996. Before that I was a rock and stick guy; heavily influenced by Edward Weston’s Point Lobos work. When I got here I started taking pictures of people.

Quelle: Austinistdotcom

Die Antwort auf diese Frage ist auch für mich nicht eindeutig. Je nachdem, für welchen Zweck man Fotos macht, kann man sie als Kunst oder Handwerk ansehen. Dennoch steht die Frage eigentlich nicht mehr zur Debatte: Fotografie ist heute unter Experten als Kunstform akzeptiert – die explodierende Menge an Fotoausstellungen, sogar in renommierten Museen weltweit, ist ein Zeichen dafür. Verdanken können wir dies Alfred Stieglitz, der mit seinem Magazin „Camera Work“ maßgeblich zur Steigerung der Anerkennung der Fotografie als Kunstform beigetragen hat. In Deutschland gab es die erste Fotografie-Ausstellung im Jahr 1929 in Stuttgart, wo Fotos von Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham und Man Ray erstmals der breiten Öffentlichkeit präsentiert wurden.

Im Laufe der Zeit haben sich viele verschiedene Teilbereiche der Fotografie entwickelt, etwa Landschafts-, Akt-, Industrie- oder Theaterfotografie, usw. Darüber hinaus rückt die künstlerische Bearbeitung der Fotos (Fotomontage) immer mehr in den Vordergrund. Besonders im Bereich der Werbung werden Fotomontagemethoden heutzutage gerne verwendet. Seitdem ich mich mehr für’s Fotografieren interessiere, respektiere ich auch Fotografen zunehmend, da ich weiß, welche Arbeit hinter Fotos steckt, die wir oft nur kurz betrachten und teilweise nicht einmal richtig wahrnehmen.

Wie ist eure Meinung zu diesem Thema – ist Fotografieren eine Kunstform?

Julia Margaret Cameron, Enid from Idylls of the King, 1874

On September 2 the DIA opens a new exhibition, Photography – The First 100 Years: A Survey from the DIA’s Collection. Taking a look at the early years of photography and its development as a new art form, the DIA presents a survey of 90 works from its collection. Included are a number of notable rare works from the 19th century as well as iconic imagery from the 1920s and 1930s. Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke White, Dorothea Lange in addition to 50 other pioneers and great innovators of the medium are on view in the exhibition which runs through January 3, 2010.

Unknown Photographer, Soldier and Companion, 1861-65, tintype.

One of the highlights from this exhibition is a tintype portrait of an African American couple from the 1860s. The process, a photographic image made on metal, appeared in the 1850s.  The DIA was fortunate enough to acquire it back in 2001, when it went on the auction block with other items from the collection of Jackie Napoleon Wilson, a Detroiter who developed an important and rare collection of 19th-century portraits of African Americans over the years. The exhibition moves onward from the 19th century with sections devoted to the pictorialist, modernist and social documentary eras. Photography – The First 100 Years kicks off a new and exciting season of photography exhibitions this fall 2009 and into spring 2010 at the DIA – here’s the round-up:

Avedon Fashion Photographs 1944-2000- opening October 18, 2009 through January 17, 2010. The DIA will host the first large-scale fashion retrospective since Richard Avedon’s death in 2004. Organized by the International Center for Photography, New York, the exhibition includes 181 images – many are well-known photographs – in addition to magazines and other interesting ephemera that illustrates the long and legendary career of one of America’s most successful and interesting photographers.

Detroit Experiences: Robert Frank Photographs 1955 opening March 3 through July 4, 2010. This exhibition includes over 60 black-and white photographs taken by Robert Frank in Detroit. Made during his travels through the U.S. photographing for his book The Americans, Frank observed Detroiters as they lived and worked at mid century in the U.S. In this rare body of work, many of which will be on view for the first time at the DIA, Frank documented the day-to-day lives of Americans as he tried to mingle with assembly line workers at the Rouge Factory, took in a movie at the Gratiot Drive-In, and experienced public life on Belle Isle and in the streets of Detroit. All were part of the Detroit experience as Frank perceived it over fifty years ago.

weston is so wild & sensual. makes me more excited to be vegetarian.

Click on the following link to view some of the work

from today’s Quote of the Day Photographer,

Edward Weston:

#mce_temp_url#

The photograph isolates

and perpetuates a moment

of time: an important and

revealing moment, or an

unimportant and meaningless

one, depending upon the

photographer’s understanding

of his subject and mastery

of his process. 

Edward Weston 

(1886 – 1958) 

American Artist & Photographer

… something always ahead, never quite attained,” Edward Weston – The Daybooks.

Photography by Edward Weston (Google Images)

More about the photographer and his works.

Exhibition dates: 30th May – 2nd Novemeber, 2009

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What a privilege to be able to gather these photographs that appear in the exhibition. Breathe, look, enjoy!

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Edward Weston
‘Palma Cuernavaca’
1925

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Edward Weston
‘Excusado’ (Toilet)
1925

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“In the decades following the Revolution of 1910, foreign artists and intellectuals flocked to Mexico in order to experience its warm climate and lively cultural scene. They were inspired by Mexico‘s exotic tropical landscape, its ancient monuments and colonial architecture, the work of its modern muralists, and the country‘s indigenous arts and crafts. During two extended trips to Mexico made between 1923 and 1926, American photographer Edward Weston (1886–1958) created some of his earliest modernist photographs, which form the core of the exhibition, Viva Mexico! Edward Weston and His Contemporaries, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). Featured are approximately 45 works, among them about 30 rare photographs by Weston and selected images by Tina Modotti, Brett Weston, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Paul Strand. These photographs from the 1920s and ’30s are drawn from the Museum’s own collection, as well as The Lane Collection, which is on long-term loan to the MFA. Additionally, a compelling 1939 portrait of Frida Kahlo by Hungarian-born photographer Nickolas Muray has been lent from a local private collection. Viva Mexico! is on view May 30 through November 2 in the MFA‘s Herb Ritts Gallery.

“Viva Mexico! highlights Weston‘s pivotal years in this highly creative environment, which had a lasting impact on his work and inspired some of his earliest experiments in still life, landscape, and cloud studies,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA. “This exhibition allows us to focus on a critical juncture in Weston‘s career, and to present one of the strengths of The Lane Collection – its holdings of the photographer‘s early modernist work.”

The Lane Collection, which includes gifts and loans to the MFA, comprises modern American paintings, photographs, and works on paper assembled by the late William H. Lane and his wife, Saundra B. Lane, a Trustee of the MFA. During the late 1960s, the Lanes acquired a large number of Weston‘s vintage photographs, which are now widely acknowledged to be the most important collection of the photographer‘s work in private hands.

“Acquiring more than 2,000 Edward Weston photographs directly from his sons was an amazing learning experience for us and we were thrilled to be able to immerse ourselves in the work of such a major artist in such great depth,” said collector Saundra Lane. “The Mexico pictures by Edward, Brett, and Tina Modotti are some of my personal favorites. These works inspired me to more recently acquire two early Manuel Alvarez Bravo photographs, ‘El soñador’ (The Dreamer) and ‘Nude’, included in the exhibition, each of them a quintessentially Mexican subject and clearly made under the influence of Weston and Modotti.”

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Edward Weston
‘Tina Modotti’
1924

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Edward Weston
‘Galván Shooting (Manuel Hernández Galván, Mexico)’
1924

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Edward Weston
‘Rose Roland (Covarrubias)’
1926

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In an early biography of Edward Weston, writer and editor Nancy Newhall described Mexico as his “Paris,” the place where he greatly expanded his range as an artist. His total of more-than two years in Mexico—Weston‘s only travel outside the US—offered him the opportunity to move away from his Pictorialist style, with its soft focus and ethereal, romantic qualities, toward more abstract forms and sharper resolution of detail. Heroic portrait heads, avant-garde nudes, urban views, cloud studies and landscapes, and images of Mexican toys and folk art are among the subjects he captured with his large-format camera. This period of experimentation with isolated objects also resulted in some of Weston‘s earliest forays into still life, as can be seen in Chayotes (1924), a close-up of the beautiful, spiny squash arranged in a painted wooden bowl.

In 1923, Weston made the difficult decision to close his portrait photography studio in Tropico (now Glendale), California, and move to Mexico, as he wrote in his journal, – to start life anew. He left behind his wife and three of his four young sons and traveled to Mexico City with his lover, Italian-born actress Tina Modotti (1896–1942) and his oldest son Chandler. Modotti ran Weston’s new studio, served as his translator and muse, and under his tutelage began to make highly accomplished photographs of her own. Together they became immersed in the vibrant community of artists and intellectuals centered there, which included painters Diego Rivera, Jean Charlot, Xavier Guerrero, and Rafael Salas, as well as the poet Luis Quintanilla, writer D.H. Lawrence, anthropologist Frances Toor, and journalist Carleton Beals. Although Weston and Modotti always remained outsiders looking in, the several exhibitions of their work during their Mexican sojourn helped spark a lively interest in modernist photography in their adopted country, where until this time photography had been admired mainly as a documentary tool, rather than a fine art.

“This exhibition will be a wonderful opportunity for our visitors to experience Weston‘s stunning Mexican photographs firsthand, many of which are rarely seen platinum prints taken in the period just before he made his classic black-and-white images of peppers and shells,” said Karen Haas, The Lane Collection Curator of Photographs, who organized Viva Mexico! “These rich, warm-toned prints, when seen in context with photographs by his contemporaries in Mexico during the 1920s and ’30s, promise to be a revelation even to those who know Weston’s work well.”

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Edward Weston
‘Tina On The Azotea’
circa 1924

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Edward Weston
‘Desde la Azotea’
1924

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Many of the earliest images that Weston produced in Mexico were portraits and nudes, both subjects that he had specialized in previously but now took on a very different look and feel. Soon after his arrival, he began a series of monumental portraits of friends and acquaintances, all of them shot very close-up and from slightly below eye level, their heads filling the picture frame and their features heroicized. These include Galván Shooting (1924), Tina Modotti (1924), Victoria Marin (1926), and Rose Roland Covarrubias (1926). He also made a stunning group of nudes of Modotti posing on their sun-baked rooftop patio, all three of which he titled Tina on the Azotea (1924), as well as an incredibly simple and sculptural image, Nude (1926) of fellow American expatriate Anita Brenner. The Brenner nude, along with Palma Cuernavaca (1925), Aqueduct (1924), and Excusado (1925) all share a similarly stark, abstract, and timeless quality – what Weston described as an attempt to render “the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself.”

Abstract architectural details began to make their way into Weston‘s work as well and he was drawn to capture light and shadow on a variety of surfaces, from the zigzag stone patterns of the ancient Ruinas de Mitla (1926) to the angled forms of the convent stairwell and skylight in San Pedro y San Pablo (1924). Viva Mexico! also showcases Weston’s experimentation with landscape photography, both urban and rural. The striking view from his studio roof is recorded in Desde la Azotea (1924), in which the geometry of the buildings below is heightened by the elevated vantage point and steeply raking light, and in Michoacán (1926), where he captures the beautifully undulating silhouette of the pastoral countryside. Much less common among his subjects from this period are some of Weston‘s little-known photographs made in outdoor markets and fairs, such as Mercado, Oaxaca (1926) and Bowls, Oaxaca (1926). These open-air street images closely relate to another group of pictures, including Torito (1925), a playful little papier-maché bull, and Fish Gourd and Striped Serape (1926), which reflect Weston’s newfound interest in the vernacular Mexican toys and folk objects that he collected and lovingly documented in his studio while waiting for clients to arrive for portrait sittings. These whimsical photographs also serve as fascinating precursors to Weston‘s high modernist still lifes of less than a decade later.

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Tina Modotti
‘Worker’s Hands’
1927

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Edward Weston
‘Tina on the Azotea, with kimono’
1924

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Tina Modotti
‘Hands Washing’
1927

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Over the course of her time in Mexico, Modotti rapidly went from photographer’s apprentice and model to fine art photographer in her own right. Although her career as a photographer was relatively brief, her powerful pictures from this period sometimes rival those of her lover and teacher, Edward Weston. Modotti was a rare woman in a mostly male profession, but she brought to her work a deep-seated interest in the people and the politics of Mexico in the 1920s. Unlike Weston, who preferred to work in the studio rather than the street, Modotti straddled the worlds of fine art photography and radical social activism. Her commitment to the struggles of the people can be seen in her iconic Worker’s Hands (1927), and her fascination with Mexico’s public demonstrations and celebrations is captured in Effigies of Judas (1924). She was so impassioned by these causes, in fact, that Modotti joined the Communist party and continued to work in Mexico for several years after Weston finally returned home in 1926. Before he left for California, however, Weston and Modotti collaborated on a photographic commission to illustrate a book on Mexican history and culture entitled Idols Behind Altars, which was written by their friend Anita Brenner and published in 1929. A copy of the book is among the case materials featured in the exhibition, as is American photographer Laura Gilpin’s book, Temples in Yucatan: A Camera Chronicle of Chichén Itzá (1948), which showcases her pictures of the ancient Mayan ruins taken during her two trips there in the early 1930s and mid ’40s.

Viva Mexico! also offers visitors to the MFA a rare chance to see some of Brett Weston’s (1911–1993) earliest serious photographs made during Edward Weston’s second extended trip to Mexico in 1925 and 1926 (after an eight-month-long hiatus in California). The second eldest of Weston‘s four sons was only 14 years old when he accompanied his father to Mexico City and went with him to live in the house and studio that Weston shared with Modotti. Rather than the large-format camera and platinum prints that his father preferred, Brett Weston was given a 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ Graflex camera and printed his pictures on less expensive gelatin silver papers, which captured the precise detail and texture that his father admired in his work. The boy quickly fell under the spell of photography and his time in Mexico proved to be an ideal preparation for his own future as a professional photographer. Two of Brett Weston‘s highly abstract architectural views, Tin rooftops (1926) and Ventilator (1926), are on view in the exhibition.

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Manuel Alvarez Bravo
‘El Soñador’ (The Dreamer)
1931

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The only Mexican-born artist in the exhibition, Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1902–2002), is represented with three works, El soñador (The Dreamer) (1931), Nude (1935), and Las Lavanderas sobreentendidas (Washerwomen Implied) Draped Yucca Plants, Mexico (1932). As a young, aspiring photographer in Mexico City, Bravo first met Modotti in 1927, soon after Weston‘s departure. He was greatly inspired by the look and spirit of Modotti‘s work as well as the Weston prints that she shared with him. Bravo is perhaps best-known for the stunning female nudes that he made over the course of his long career, but Viva Mexico! features a rare male figure study, Nude (1935). With its androgynous curves and simplified form, it clearly relates to Weston‘s nudes of his son Neil made a decade earlier. Bravo‘s photographs always have a profoundly Mexican essence to them, but especially during the 1920s and ‘30s; they also demonstrate the influence of the European Surrealists as can be seen in the slightly unsettling, yet lovely work El soñador (The Dreamer).”

Viva Mexico! also showcases the work of American photographer and documentary filmmaker Paul Strand (1890–1976), who lived in Mexico during the mid-1930s. Although he and Weston had met in New York in 1922 and were aware of each other’s careers, their sojourns in Mexico did not coincide. The situation that Strand found on crossing the border in 1932 was very different than the more optimistic period of cultural Renaissance that Weston had experienced during the mid-1920s. Like Modotti, whose social concerns and unsentimental approach he shared, Strand was inspired to make portraits of Mexico‘s indigenous peoples and the country‘s dramatic landscapes. Landscape, Near Saltillo (1932) was one of the earliest images Strand shot in Mexico; taken in the north of the country on his initial trip down to Mexico City, it features the glowing white form of an adobe building set off by spiny, tall cacti and a vast expanse of sky. Also on view is Día de Fiesta (1933), a starkly simple image of three men and a child standing against a sunlit wall, which was made just prior to the production of Redes (Nets, or The Wave, in the US), his documentary film focusing on the struggles of a group of fisherman near Veracruz.”

Text from the press release of the exhibition

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Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Avenue of the Arts
Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5523
617-267-9300
TTY: 617-267-9703

Opening Hours:

Monday and Tuesday
10 am-4:45 pm
Wednesday-Friday
10 am-9:45 pm
Saturday and Sunday
10 am-4:45 pm

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

It was Irving Penn who said: “A good photograph is one that communicate a fact, touches the heart,leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.”…

Edward Weston also said that he saw no reason for recording the obvious (he was talking about photographs).

Today, drawing inspiration from quotes above, I felt a strong desire to share one of my old photographs called Darkwaters. Darkwaters is an abstract that seeks to summarize the complexities of the problems arising from the discovery and the ‘curse’ of crude oil in Nigeria…

The lives, the blood, the greed, the poverty, the hatred, the destitution, the ‘riches’, the struggle, the fears…

The waters have darkened… The bloods are black…

I’ll quote some lines from Daktari’s poem, H-matrix:

“…Crude makes unclean black from live green…I’m not instigating a violent revolution… But this institution needs relevent evolution!…

So, here is Darkwaters… what does it mean to you?

DarkWaters

Appreciation

Let me also use this medium to express my sincere appreciation to you all for the warm birthday wishes and prayers. May your joys know no boundaries. Amen.

Ochuko’s Blog Φ

Edward Weston viene spesso citato come un maestro della fotografia dell’inizio del ‘900. Famosissima la sua foto di Tina Modotti scattata sulla terrazza della loro casa in Messico (la stessa terrazza su cui realizzavano, se non c’erano troppe nuvole, le loro stampe a contatto). Famosa anche la relazione artistica e sentimentale con Charis Wilson. Famosa tanto che la Northwest Documentaries Arts & Media ha realizzato un film su di loro (Eloquent Nude) con la regia di Ian McCluskey. Fondato sulle testimonianze dirette della Wilson , novantenne ma perfettamente lucida nel ricostruire le sue sedute con Weston come modella, presenta anche lunghe sequenze in cui vengono ricostruite (con attori dotati di macchine fotografiche, automobili e costumi d’epoca) alcune delle sequenze fotografiche più celebri, come quelle sulle dune o quelle scattate in montagna. Una specie di “finto documentario” molto evocativo, molto ben architettato, a tratti emozionante. Sul sito web ci sono alcune sequenze in preview.

E poi c’è lei. Il fascino delle sue pose di nudo degli anni ’30 è molto ben bilanciato dal fascino delle sue rimembranze.

A differenza di altri fotografi dell’epoca, Weston era un po’ gameno, più attento alla tecnica che alla filosofia della fotografia (così almeno emerge dalla lettura dei suoi diari), grande rincorritore di gonnelle e tombeur de femmes. Ma fu anche  uno dei primi artisti ad battersi per la “rispettabilità” del nudo fotografico, e per la possibilità di esporre le sue foto senza veli. Al curatore di una mostra fotografica al MOMA di New York, che si opponeva all’esposizione di fotografie che mostrassero i peli pubici, Weston rispose così: By all means tell your Board that pubic hair has been definitely a part of my development as an artist, tell them it has been the most important part, that I like it brown, black, red or golden, curly or straight, all sizes and shapes.

Una frase in cui forse si riconoscono molti fotografi, di oggi come di ieri.