FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Edward Weston Exhibit at the Crocker Art Museum Traces Career of Popular American Master of Photography

On View November 5, 2004 – January 9, 2005

September 13, 2004 – Sacramento, Calif. – Opening November 5 th at the Crocker Art Museum, Edward Weston: Life Work is an opportunity to view previously unpublished works interspersed with well-known signature images by an influential master of 20 th century photography. This comprehensive exhibit of 100-images features Weston’s best known subjects – nudes, landscapes, portraits, buildings, shells and peppers – and encompasses all phases of his five-decade career (b.1886 – d.1956).

His friend and colleague, Ansel Adams, described the results of Weston’s probing gaze as “eloquent of the fundamental unity of the world.” The development of Weston’s style can be traced through the works on display, including an intimate look at rarely exhibited work from his early period. These Pictorialist images with soft focus and painterly compositions transition towards the sharply focused Modern style for which Weston is recognized.

Presented as a chronological survey, Life Work reveals Weston’s involvement with the major artistic styles of his time as well as the materialization of his distinct approach to photography. Highlights include a striking 1909 study of his wife Flora, perhaps his first nude; the urban modernism famously captured by Steel: Armco, Middletown, Ohio, 1922; and the emergence of a newly trimmed-down approach pursued during a mid-1920s sojourn in Mexico. In Carmel, where he lived from 1929 to 1935, he added gnarled cypresses, rocks and kelp to his experiments with form and scale. These still lifes and nature studies segue into a remarkable set of sculptural nudes produced in 1933 and 1934.

It was also during the 1930s that Weston became a charter member of the “Group f/64,” which included Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and others. The name references the lens setting the photographers frequently used to secure maximum sharpness of both foreground and distance. In later years Weston pulled back and loosened his style considerably, as he turned to the open landscape, featuring the central California coast. An important suite of six dune studies, made near Oceano , California from 1934 to 1946, includes a rare example of Weston’s experimental color work. In addition to landscapes and studies of desert detritus, portraits of prominent artistic and literary figures are also well represented, such as author D. H. Lawrence and artist Diego Rivera . The chronological survey concludes with Weston’s consummate final photograph, nicknamed The Dody Rocks, Point Lobos, 1948.

Edward Weston: Life Work is organized and circulated by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles and sponsored, in part, by UBS and Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. All works courtesy of the Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg Collection.

Also on View
Brett Weston: the 1961 Portfolio

Brett Weston, the second son of Edward Weston, enjoyed a remarkably close personal and working relationship with his famous father. A prolific artist, the younger Weston amassed an impressive body of work. Drawn to details and fragments of imagery in nature, Brett practiced straight photography—using the camera to photograph objects as they appear through the lens, avoiding popular pictorial techniques such as soft focus. The clear, often stark tonal contrasts in Brett Weston’s photography show the influence of his father’s style, but his skillful attention to the materiality of objects and his recording of the limitless variety of surfaces in the natural world are uniquely his own.

Exhibition Related Education Programs

November 6, NOON – 3 PM
Hands-on Art Activity: Photography and Art
Experiment with mixed media to create a photo collage. Plan your collage with magazine and calendar pictures, watercolor crayons and a variety of papers and paint. Bring photographs to personalize your creation.

November 11, 6 PM
Edward Weston: The f/64 Stop
Drew Johnson, Curator of Photography at the Oakland Museum of Art will talk about the life and times of photographer Edward Weston.

December 11, 10 AM – 1 PM
Educator Blastoff: The Photography of Edward Weston
Educators will learn two art projects, receive lesson plans, and tour the exhibition to prepare for implementing the activities in a classroom setting. Fee: $15 members; $20 nonmembers. Please contact Natalie Nelson at (916) 264-1987 to register by December 3.

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The Crocker Art Museum was founded in 1885 and continues as the leading art institution for the California Capital Region and Central Valley. The Museum offers a diverse spectrum of special exhibitions, events and programs to augment its collections of Californian, European and Asian artworks. The Crocker is located at 216 O Street in downtown Sacramento. Museum hours are 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Tuesday – Sunday; Thursday until 9 p.m. For more information on exhibits and events call (916) 264-5423 or visit crockerartmuseum.org.

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Media Contact: LeAnne R. Ruzzamenti
Media: (916) 264-1963
Mobile : (916) 213-9402
Public: (916) 264-5423
216 O Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
www.crockerartmuseum.org