Brett Weston

American, 1911–1993

Weston was born in Los Angeles in 1911, the second son of photographer Edward Weston. In 1925 Weston moved to Mexico, where he became his father’s apprentice and was surrounded by the likes of Tina Modotti, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In 1929 Weston and his father relocated to Carmel, California. At various times he also lived in Los Angeles, where he had his own studio and portrait business, and in New York, where he was stationed in the Army. Following a 1947 Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to photograph along the East Coast, he moved to Carmel to pursue his artwork, including wood sculpture that was influenced by his own photographs.

From the 1950s through the 1980s Weston’s style changed sharply and was characterized by high contrast, abstract imagery. The subjects he chose were, for the most part, not unlike what interested him early in his career: plant leaves, knotted roots and tangled kelp. He concentrated mostly on close-ups and abstract details, but his prints reflected a preference for high contrast that reduced his subjects to pure form.

“
The camera for an artist is just another tool. It is no more mechanical than a violin if you analyze it. Beyond the rudiments, it is up to the artist to create art, not the camera.”

— Brett Weston