Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

Edward Weston, one of the most important photographers of the first half of the twentieth century, is the personification of poetry applied to photography. His splendid images printed in an impeccable way depict romantic landscapes, details of Nature and splendid portraits. As Ansel Adams said: “Weston is one of the few creative artists of today. His work illuminates man’s inner journey toward perfection of the spirit.” Weston can definitely be considered as the first great American artist to express his aesthetic vision through photographic subjects, a new artistic medium that besides its technical limits, presents its peculiar qualities which impose a new formal beauty composed of details, surfaces, and rhythms rendered with a vibrant preciseness.

The American artist was convinced that the purpose of photography was to capture life and in some way this is presented. This is so true that he declared: “I did my part in revealing the living world to others”. And this couldn’t be if not for Weston’s sensual appetite for every form – organic and vegetable, anthropological and industrial - as an American empiricist not immune to certain precautions towards modern Europe and his subjective environments. The photographer searches in reality, whether natural or artificial, to isolate and make them sublime revealing man’s common emotional sensitivity. And yet, with this passion for forms that carried a “shiver of pleasure” when the subject was about to “give itself” to its goal, in the last decade of his activities, his inhibition overcame forms to welcome Nature’s automatic gestures. This type of abstraction by Weston shouldn’t however be considered as a kind of loss of reality, but as an extraction, a concentration, an abstract of common elements verging towards a universal valuing of form, and therefore of life, because according to Weston, life’s force and movement are embedded in form. “By using the camera I’ve shown how Nature offers simplified forms, already created and selected thus “ready to use” upon the artists’ instinct, extremes that Brancusi had to create”, affirms Weston.

Another essential characteristic in order to understand the work of Edward Weston is his capacity to achieve great incisiveness and otherness through photography right at the moment of shooting. In fact in 1932 he founded the Group f/64 together with other photographers. It was an artistic movement that gathered the most hardcore purist photographers. This search for photographers triggered an aesthetic based upon technical and stylistic perfection: any photos that weren’t perfectly focused or perfectly printed or mounted on white card were considered “impure”. This was due to a violent reaction to the corny and sentimental style that dominated pictorial photography in those years. Edward Weston, other than gaining notoriety thanks to his sublime aesthetics, is widely known within the art market. His personal record dates back to October last year when New York’s Sotheby’s sold Nautilus for 1,105,000 dollars (equal to779, 651 euros), against an estimate of 600-900 million dollars. Weston’s works have achieved notable results at the same auction house: in 2005 Breast went under the hammer for 720 million dollars (estimated at 300-400 million dollars), while in 2003 Two Shells was sold for 467,200 dollars (estimated at 200-300 million dollars).

If you are passionate collectors of Edward Weston’s photography, you cannot miss this auction on April 8^th when Sotheby’s in New York will start with 49 lots dedicated to “Edward Weston’s gifts to his sister and other photographs”. It will be an exceptional auction that will showcase a large number of 40 pieces by the American artist (the other 9 are by Brett Weston) of which are: Dunes, Oceano presented at an estimate of 120-180 million dollars; Bananas valued at 80-120 million dollars; Caballito (Caballito de Cuarenta Centavos) and Church, Motherlode, both estimated at 40-60 million dollars.

Official Web Site: www.edward-weston.com