Edward Weston Photography

Celebrating the centenary of the great photographer's birth, Edward Weston Photography  feaures major examples from the Museum's permanent collection dating from 1925 to 1941.

Weston was born in Illinois in 1886, and first became interested in photography when his father gave the 16-year-old a Kodak Bulls-Eye No. 2 camera in 1902. He opened his first studio in 1911 in Tropico (now Glendale), California. Although he enjoyed a commercial success and an international reputation, he was discontent with his creative direction, and in 1923 he moved to Mexico where he lived and worked for three years.

Upon his return to California in 1926, Weston turned increaingly to subjects of his own choosing, such as his series of close-ups of rocks, shells, and vegetables. For the next ten years, he worked on his famous studies of California motifs: Point Lobos, Oceano, and his incomparable still lifes and nudes.

In 1937, Weston was the first photographer to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to spend the next two years traveling through California and the West, taking 1500 photographs. Weston was stricken with Parkinson's disease in 1945, and he took his last photograph three years later. He died in Carmel in 1958.