Edward Weston (TASCHEN Icons Series) [Paperback]

TASCHEN (Creator), Manfred Heiting (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2001 | Series: Icons

From still lifes of vegetables to shells to the human nude, Weston's photographs demonstrate exacting precision and tonal depth. A compact overview of his starkly original work, this book is an introduction to the photographer.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1902, the year Edward Weston was given his first camera, few people regarded photography as more than a craft. But along with innovators like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, Weston revolutionized the ways photographers chose subject material and used photographic techniques to create what gradually came to be accepted as fine art.

This is an elegant book, designed and printed in Germany, with an essay by Terence Pitts, of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. It presents 180 of Weston's finest images, including many--such as the pines of Point Lobos, the sand dunes of Oceano, and his stark, unadorned nudes--that have become icons. Whereas the photographs of Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy were, to Weston's eyes, hopelessly mannered, his images are elemental, organic, and in harmony with nature's rhythms. Weston spent most of his working life in Mexico and California, and much of his work, replete with shadows, is illuminated with the harsh light of those places. In 1932, he and Ansel Adams founded the influential photographic collective Group f/64, named after the lens-aperture size that exposed an image at its most detailed and clear. This was Weston's aesthetic: to show the real world in its unrelieved integrity rather than create an imaginary construct. He was concerned with visual truth, not with character or storytelling. Weston was a true pioneer whose rigorous vision permanently changed the ways we see the world around us. --John Stevenson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Blossfeldt, Sander, and Weston all blossomed with the publication of their first books around 1930, were direct in their use of the medium, and rank among photography's defining masters. Yet they each had a unique style and focused on distinct subject matter, making their works instantly recognizable. These three books, part of a new photography series from Taschen, are sufficiently monumental to honor the artists' talents but still convey their singular talents. Germans Sander and Blossfeldt pioneered the "new objectivity" with their massive survey projects. Sander set out to document all of society in hundreds of portraits, typically titled "Country Farmer Dressed for a Funeral" or "Middle-Class Family." The influence of his style, stern yet eminently humane, is more present than ever in current photography. A prominent collector and photography writer, Heiting has made excellent work of a difficult task selecting more than 100 of these portraits for inclusion and augmenting them with lesser-known architectural and landscape photographs. Blossfeldt originally photographed plant specimens to help his students in art school with copying natural forms. But with the publication of Art Forms in Nature (1928), containing 60 of these photogravures, he was hailed as master and went on to publish two more acclaimed compendia. Adam, a photography writer, offers stunning reproductions of all the prints found in all three of Blossfeldt's volumes as well as the original essays from the time. The Weston volume will give readers a new appreciation of his almost abstract nature studies and nudes. Heiting has again chosen exemplary works from Weston's more diverse oeuvre, combining well-known signature pieces with unexpected images. Terrence Pitts, director of the Center for Creative Photography, has added an especially well-researched essay to accompany the selections. These books are all well done, but based on the popularity of their work in the United States, Weston belongs in all public libraries, Sander in medium and large public libraries, and Blossfeldt in all libraries with a serious interest in photography; the entire series would be at home in any academic institution.ADoug McClemont, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Taschen (May 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3822855480
• ISBN-13: 978-3822855485
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,591,469 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a modern classic, August 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Edward Weston (Photo Book Series) (Hardcover)

An excellent and well documented introduction to Weston's oeuvre and philosophy. One of the true and underrated innovators in photography. If you love Adams, Depardon or Cartier Bresson's landscapes,welcome home ! Some stunning pictures of the desert. Very very good repro quality. Buy with confidence.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Natural Goodness -- "Form Follows Function", November 30, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Edward Weston (Photo Book Series) (Hardcover)

This book will appeal to all of those who appreciate high quality reproductions of Edward Weston's finest works. Dunes, cypress, nudes, and portraits are all conjured up by the name of Edward Weston, and each is well represented in this gorgeous volume.

Before going into a description of this book, let me further caution those of you who do not know Edward Weston that he much favored nude photographs of women and had intimate relations with many women in his life which are described in Terence Pitts' interesting essay. If such things offend you, I suggest that you avoid this volume.

"Edward understood thoughts and concepts that dwell on simple mystical levels." -- Ansel Adams

It is appropriate that this volume contains some comments by Ansel Adams about Edward Weston. The two have many similarities in their work, and were friends. Both were attracted to the underlying grandeur of nature, and looked for the connectedness in all things (a sort of fractal-based perspective on unity). Weston was especially successful in integrating images of people with his nature images.

The works speak for themselves. "Edward Weston, contrary to so many now practicing photography, never verbalized on his own work." -- Ansel Adams

The potential for each of us from considering these images is very great from Adams' point of view. "You might discover, through Edward Weston's work, how basically good you are, or might become."

Edward Weston was formally trained to be a studio photographer, and soon sought to escape the limitations of doing commercial portraits. He was very skilled in this area, and there was always demand for his work. After 1930, he was able to stop retouching portraits which was a great relief to him.

Nature always fascinated him, and in the latter part of his life he was able to focus on the potential of his work rather than on eking out a living. In the 1930s he received the first Guggenheim Fellowship to travel for photography, and made good use of this to see locales he would not otherwise have reached.

Weston's influence is important in the 20th century for establishing photography as an art, rather than as representation.

Weston did his best work in California and Mexico, where he traveled extensively. I was also impressed with his industrial photography, which I had not seen much of before. He had an amazing eye for form in industrial settings and in designs of mundane objects.

The images here are well reproduced in almost all cases, and the size of the pages is excellent for the images involved.

Here are my favorites from the images in this superb book:

Epilogue 1919

Sunny Corner in an Attic 1920

Ruth Shaw 1922

Armco Steel 1922

Lois Kellog 1923

Rose Roland, Mexico 1926

Shell 1927

Shells 1927

Cabbage Leaf 1931

Cypress Root, Seventeen Mile Drive 1929

Cypress Root and Succulents, Point Lobos 1930

Bedpan 1930

Charis 1934

Sheels and Hill, San Juan 1934

Dunes (5), Oceano, 1936

Iceberg Lake 1937

Juniper, Lake Tenaya 1937

Nude (#4 and #5) Oceano 1936

Dante's View, Death Valley 1937

Church Door, Hornitos, California 1940

Potato Cellar, Lake Tahoe 1937

Stonecrop and Cypress, Point Lobos 1939

I believe that a rewarding way to enjoy this work even more is to give yourself the equivalent of a Guggenheim fellowship for a shorter period of time, and visit many of the locales where Edward Weston produced these images. Take along your camera, and see what you can capture for yourself. It will increase your appreciation of what he saw, and the issues of capturing it for others.

Enjoy the beauty around you, in all of its natural forms.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Page size is too small, June 16, 2010

By 

Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya (India) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Weston (Taschen Icons) (Hardcover)

Edward Weston was one of the great masters of photography. However the size of reproductions in this book is too small and the quality of prints is not good enough to do justice to his photographic style which depended on precision and detail for its effect. You are better off viewing the photos off the Internet on your computer monitor. The accompanying text is mostly a factual biography. Do not buy.