Edward Weston
1941
A bottle-burst on Winter Zero Swartzel's farm near Middletown, Ohio

Silver print
5 x 4 in (12.7 x 10.2 cm)
 
Swann Galleries - New York
Courtesy of Swann Galleries (Auction, Oct 15, 2007, #2124, Lot 103)
 
With Weston's title and notations, in pencil, on verso.
 
See Conger, Edward Weston: Photographs, cat. 1645.
Weston's early work was highly pictorialist in nature, but the early 1920s marked a distinct stylistic change toward realism. Weston believed that "The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh." Weston's careful studies of nudes, shells, household items, and vegetables reveal him to be a photographer devoted to detail and distinctly in touch with the world around him. Each are cool and beautiful, lush and elegant. The bottles photographed here are quirky and light-filled, and reveal Weston's eye for composition and his ability to transform, to reveal the essential grace and beauty of objects before his lens.
 
LL/23169