Edward Weston Quotes

To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

Edward counseled that a photograph of consequence could be made from just about anything. Subject matter, in itself, was not critical. The understanding of the photographer was.

It has come to me of late that comparing one man’s work to another’s, naming one greater or lesser, is a wrong approach. The important and only vital question is, how much greater, finer, am I than I was yesterday? Have I fulfilled my possibilities, made the most of my potentialities? What a marvellous world if all would, — could hold this attitude toward life.

Yes Edward Weston, I could indeed be happy in a house full of enemies, if I had but one friend, who truly, deeply, and faithfully loved me and if that friend were you - though we might be far apart... seldom to hear from each other, still more seldom to meet... though toil, and trouble, and vexation might surround me, still... it would be too much happiness for me to dream of!

A new love came into my life, a most beautiful one, one which will, I believe, stand the test of time...Perhaps C. will be remembered as the great love of my life. Already I have achieved certain heights reached with no other love.

Group f.64 believed that photographic beauty was defined by beautiful prints produced by purely photographic means. The subjects need not be beautiful. What might appear ugly or commonplace could have value through the respectful understanding and expression of the photographer.

As to “Aesthetic Considerations,” Ansel counseled, “A photograph that is merely a superficial record of the subject fails as an aesthetic expression of that subject. The expression must be an emotional amplification, and this emotional amplification relates to point of view, organization, revelation of substance through textures, tonal relations, and the perfection of the technical expression of all these elements.”54

Weston, having been born in Chicago, was raised with typical, well-grounded, mid-western values. On his 16th birthday, his father gave him a Kodak camera with which he started what would become his lifetime vocation. During the summer of 1908, Weston met Flora May Chandler, a schoolteacher who was seven years older than he was. The following year the couple married and in time they had four sons. Weston and his family moved to Southern California and opened a portrait studio on Brand Boulevard, in the artsy section of Glendale, California, called Tropico. His artistic skills soon became apparent and he became well known for his portraits of famous people, such as Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman. In the autumn of 1913, hearing of his work, Margrethe Mather, a photographer from Los Angeles, came to his studio, where Weston asked her to be his studio assistant. It didn’t take long before the two developed a passionate, intimate relationship. Both Weston and Mather became active in the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was extremely outgoing and artistic in a most flamboyant way. Her bohemian sexual values were new to Weston’s conventional thinking, but Mather excited him and presented him with a new outlook that he found enticing. Mather was beautiful, and being bisexual and having been a high-class prostitute, was delightfully worldly. Mather's uninhibited lifestyle became irresistible to Weston and her photography took him into a new and exciting art form. As Mather worked and overtly played with him, she presented a lifestyle that was in stark contrast to Weston’s conventional home life, and he soon came to see his wife Flora as a person with whom he had little in common. Weston expanded his horizons but tried to keep his affairs with other women a secret. As he immersed himself further into nude photography, it became more difficult to hide his new lifestyle from his wife. Flora became suspicious about this secret life, but apparently suffered in silence. One of the first of many women who agreed to model nude for Weston was Tina Modotti. Although Mather remained with Weston, Tina soon became his primary model and remained so for the next several years. There was an instant attraction between Tina Modotti, Mather and Edward Weston, and although he remained married, Tina became his student, model and lover. Richey soon became aware of the affair, but it didn’t seem to bother him, as they all continued to remain good friends. The relationship Tina had with Weston could definitely be considered “cheating,” since knowledge of the affair was withheld as much as possible from his wife Flora May. Perhaps his wife knew and condoned this new promiscuous relationship, since she had also endured the intense liaison with Margrethe Mather. Tina, Mather and Weston continued working together until Tina and Weston suddenly left for Mexico in 1923. As a group, they were all a part of the cozy, artsy, bohemian society of Los Angeles, which was where they were introduced to the then-fashionable, communistic philosophy.

GOOD Reader. When I first penned this discourse, I intended it chiefly for the satisfaction of my private friends: but, since that time, have been persuaded to publish the same. And the rather, because of a disorderly Colony [of Thomas Weston’s men] that are dispersed, and most of them returned [to England]; to the great prejudice and damage of him that set them forth.

Even their environments were opposites, and that matters. A painter can paint anywhere; the subject can spring from the painter’s mind. Photographers must be in the presence of their subjects. Stieglitz lived in and photographed a long-tamed landscape, from his skyscraper forests to the fenced pastures of his family’s summerhouse outside the city. Edward could see the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains from his front porch, and even Los Angeles had been wilderness not that long before.

Breton, heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud, believed that art should be freed from the brake placed on creativity by the conscious mind.

Although Reed tried valiantly, the income from print sales never balanced out the high cost of framing, advertising, printing announcements, and the rent on New York’s prestigious gallery row, West Fifty-seventh Street. She confessed that the Delphic Studios were “a philanthropic endeavor rather than a business enterprise” and that, sadly, “sales were so infrequent as to make hope of any return at all from commissions a remote possibility.

I cannot, as you [Edward Weston] once proposed to me—“solve the problem of life by losing myself in the problem of art”… in my case, life is always struggling to predominate and art naturally suffers.

Now she was being held hostage by a group of drug traffickers and as much as Weston wanted to say I told you so, he wouldn’t. At least not until Silver was safely back at his house, under his watch and protection. Something else she was going to pitch a fit about

Tina Modotti and EdwardWeston opened an upscale portrait studio and became involved in the avant-garde community of San Angel, a fashionable southern suburb in Mexico City, which was at one time a weekend retreat for Spanish nobility. It wasn’t until about sixty years ago that this still-quaint district became an integral part of Mexico City. Tina, as usual, modeled and romped in the nude, this time for Diego Rivera, an internationally acclaimed artist. In 1926, Diego’s wife Lupe Marín, accused him of having an affair with Tina and insisted that he not see her again. Not being daunted by his wife’s insistence, Diego frequently hung out with Tina and her younger friend Frida Kahlo, who in turn also enjoyed Diego’s company. It was all just part of the wild times in San Angel, however it probably led to Diego and Lupe’s separation and ultimate divorce.

I feel towards persons as I do towards art, — constructively. Find all the good first. Judge by what has been done, — not by omissions or mistakes. And look well into oneself! A life can well be spent correcting and improving one’s own faults without bothering about others.

And what made everything worse was he’d been semi-right. Not that I lacked experience, because I didn’t. I had more time on the water than every man on the team Weston had put together, including the members of the Coast Guard.

The important and only vital question is, how much greater, finer, am I than I was yesterday? Have I fulfilled my possibilities, made the most of my potentialities. What a marvelous world if all would, could hold this attitude toward life.34

Despite Old Leatherman’s mystique, Edward Payson Weston was probably America’s most famous pedestrian. In 1860, he bet his friend that Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t win the presidency. In 1861, he walked nearly five hundred miles, from Boston to Washington, DC, for Lincoln’s inauguration, arriving a few hours late but in time to attend the inaugural ball. He launched his pro career a few years later, walking thirteen hundred miles from Portland, Maine, to Chicago in twenty-six days. Two years later he walked five thousand miles for $25,000. Two years after that, the showman walked backward for two hundred miles. He competed in walking events against the best in Europe. Once, in his old age, he staged a New York to San Francisco one-hundred-day walk, but he arrived five days late. Peeved, he walked back to New York in seventy-six days. He told a reporter he wanted to become the “propagandist for pedestrianism,” to impart the benefits of walking to the world. A devout pedestrian, he preached walking over driving. Unfortunately, he was seriously injured in 1927 when a taxicab crashed into him in New York, confining him in a wheelchair for the remainder of his life.

few weeks after that, when my mother had supplied herself with an assistant, I became the wife of Edward Weston, and never have found cause to repent it, and am certain that I never shall. We have had trials, and we know that we must have them again; but we bear them well together, and endeavour to fortify ourselves and each other against the final separation—that greatest of all afflictions to the survivor; but, if we keep in mind the glorious heaven beyond, where both may meet again, and sin and sorrow are unknown, surely that too may be borne; and meantime, we endeavour to live to the glory of Him who has scattered so many blessings in our path.

Como artista excepcional, político militante e contemporâneo excêntrico, Diego Rivera teve um papel primordial numa época muito importante no México. Tornou-se, embora polémico, o mais citado artista do continente hispano-americano no estrangeiro. Foi pintor, desenhador, artista gráfico, escultor, arquitecto, cenógrafo e um dos primeiros coleccionadores de arte mexicana pré-colonial. O seu nome está relacionado com os de Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Leo Trotski, Edward Weston, Tina Modotti e, como não podia deixar de ser, Frida Kahlo. Foi, simultaneamente, alvo de ódio e amor, admiração e rejeição, lendas e difamação. O mito que, ainda em vida, se criou à volta da sua pessoa, não se deve somente à sua obra, mas também ao seu papel activo na vida política da sua época, às suas amizades e aos seus conflitos com personalidades famosas, à sua aparência fascinante e ao seu carácter rebelde. Nas suas recordações, difundidas em diversas obras biográficas, Rivera contribuiu bastante para a criação do mito à volta da sua pessoa. Gostava de se apresentar como menino precoce de ascendência exótica, que combatera na Revolução mexicana como jovem rebelde, um visionário que se recusava a fazer parte da vanguarda europeia, e que estava predestinado para ser o cabecilha da revolução artística. A sua biógrafa, Gladys March, confirma, no entanto, que a sua vida real era muito mais banal e que Rivera tinha grandes dificuldades em separar a ficção da realidade.