NARRATOR:
Edward Weston kept a detailed daybook, where he recorded events related to his life and work. On August 1, 1930, he wrote that his assistant had brought him a “glorious new pepper.” A few days later, he found the perfect way to photograph the sensuous vegetable:
EDWARD WESTON (ACTOR):
“She keeps tempting me with peppers. While experimenting with one of these... I tried putting it in a tin funnel for background. It was a bright idea, a perfect relief for the pepper and adding reflected light to important contours.”
NARRATOR:
Such artistic attention to an ordinary vegetable was revolutionary. We can actually see the pores on the pepper’s skin.
Weston was part of a group of photographers called “Group f.64,” after the smallest opening of a camera’s lens. Photographing at this f-stop required extremely long exposure times, but it allowed for extraordinary depth of field, bringing into sharp focus far more than the human eye can perceive at one time.
Weston photographed a variety of vegetables, including eggplants and cabbages, but they spoiled quickly, putting time pressure on the photographer.
EDWARD WESTON (ACTOR):
“The pepper is well worth all the time, money, effort. ...I must get this one today; it is beginning to show signs of strain and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models after a masterpiece. But I rather like the idea that they become part of me, enrich my blood as well as my vision. Last night we finished my now-famous squash..."
Pepper No. 43
1930
Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Not on View
Weston was one of the twentieth century's most influential photographers. Talented and ambitious, Weston quickly established a reputation of national prominence. Inspired by the "straight" photographic methods of photographers such as Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz, Weston worked in a manner that he believed "truthfully represented natural objects [without] trick, device or subterfuge." Weston is best known for his landscape photographs, his nudes, and a highly original series of close-up, organic forms such as shells, eggplants, and cabbages. "Pepper No. 43" is an outstanding example of this later series. In this work, Weston has removed the vegetable from its common context and rendered its scale ambiguous, giving it surrealist and sensual qualities.
Details
- Artist Name: Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
- Title: Pepper No. 43
- Date: 1930
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Edition: 1/50
- Dimensions: Image: 7-9/16 x 9-3/16 in. (19.2 x 23.3 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. Shirley C. Burden, in memory of Flobelle Fairbanks Burden
- Accession Number: PH.1970.129
- Copyright: © 2023 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
Edward Weston Photography
- Norton Simon Museum, 1986-10-30 to 1987-04-05
Nature as Muse: Prints, Watercolors and Photographs from the Seventeenth Through the Twentieth Centuries
- Norton Simon Museum, 1996-01-11 to 1997-05-25
A Tribute to Frederick Sommer, 1905-1999
- Norton Simon Museum, 1999-12-22 to 2000-03-26
A Precise Vision: Photography from the Galka Scheyer Collection
- Norton Simon Museum, 1994-09-22 to 1996-04-28
The Collectible Moment: Photographs in the Norton Simon Museum
- Norton Simon Museum, 2006-10-13 to 2007-02-26
Selections from the Permanent Collection of Photography
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-06-05 to 1973-07-29
From Europe to California: Galka Scheyer and the Avant-Garde
- Norton Simon Museum, 2003-05-16 to 2003-10-13
- Gloria Williams, The Collectible Moment: Catalogue of Photographs in the Norton Simon Museum, 2006, cat. 439 p. 273
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