Brett Weston was born in Los Angles in 1911, son of the famous photographer Edward Weston. With his father's help, he began photographing in Mexico at the age of thirteen and was showing his photographs alongside of his father's at the early age of fifteen. In 1929 he moved with his father to San Francisco and then to Carmel, where they opened a photography studio together in 1929. He was included in the influential German exhibition "Film and Foto" in 1929, which brought together an international group of artists with a highly progressive outlook. He also showed in 1932 as part of the Group f-64 show at the M.H. De Young Museum in San Francisco.

Brett Weston set himself apart from his father by pushing his work into the realm of abstraction, and thus participating in the mid-century movement of abstract art. Brett Weston bridged the gap between representation and abstraction by creating images that were realistically rendered yet composed in such a way as to emphasize abstraction in composition and form. His accomplishments in photography could be seen as a key to understanding the basic tenets of abstract art as expressed by artists working in more obviously interpretive mediums. Merle Armitage wrote of Brett Weston's work in 1956: "here are the patterns, the arrangements, the designs and the evocations sought by the finest abstract painters."

During WWII Brett Weston was drafted and stationed in New York. Luckily his superior was Arthur Rothstein, who recognized the young photographer's talents and arranged a commission for him to photograph the City. After the war, Weston received a post-service Guggenheim to photograph the East Coast in 1947. In 1948 he returned to Carmel and made photographic trips to Europe, Baja California, Hawaii, Japan, Oregon and the Northwest, and Alaska. After many visits to Hawaii, Weston built a permanent studio there in the early eighties and continued to travel between Hawaii and Carmel until his death in Hilo, Hawaii in 1993. During the course of his life, he generated an immense body of work both from these trips abroad and his continuous work in California and Hawaii.

Brett Weston garnered media attention in 1991 when he made a public announcement that he was burning all of his negatives with the intention that no one would print from them in the future. He died in January 1993, and though he had destroyed almost all of his negatives, he left behind an immense body of work spanning over six decades of active work as a photographer.

The Scott Nichols Gallery has one of the largest private collections of Brett Weston's work. A Visual Journey 1925 - 1980 features some of the highlights from this collection and represents each decade of his photographic career.

Brett Weston, Cracked Plastic, 1953

An-My Lê’s photographs tell the multifold story of Vietnam as a country in transition. Her photographs involve a complex interplay of her own memories and the reality of modern day Vietnam. Lê left Saigon in 1975 at the age of 15 and emigrated to the United States with her family. After receiving an MFA from Yale in 1993, she received the Blair Dickinson award which enabled her to return to Vietnam for the first time in 1994.

Scott Nichols Gallery is currently showing a selection from the series Vietnam, which was supported by a Guggenheim fellowship awarded in 1997. In this work Lê’s intention is to refer obliquely to the legacy of the Vietnam War while continuing her portrait of contemporary Vietnam. Her studies of tropical vegetation, gardens, and landscapes on fire are exquisite descriptions of the land and its potential for growth and renewal. But they also refer to the difficult terrain that was a central issue in the way the war unfolded and that ultimately bore the scars of devastating bombing raids and defoliation campaigns. A photograph taken in Kontum of a traditional ethnic minority funeral site shows small wooden planes suspended atop long wooden poles. The local villagers here have substituted planes where traditionally birds were used as symbols intended to carry away the spirits of the dead. Many of Lê’s photographs poignantly capture such examples of the residue of the War as it has been incorporated into contemporary Vietnam.

This exhibition coincides with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's exhibition "An-My Lê Small Wars" thru Sunday May 4th 2008.

An-My Lê, Untitled, Ho Chi Minh City, 1998

Life on earth is imperiled by human degradation of the biosphere. Earth Island Institute develops and supports projects that counteract threats to the biological and cultural diversity that sustain the environment. Through education and activism, these projects promote the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the Earth.

Earth Island Institute (EII), founded in 1982 by veteran environmentalist David Brower, fosters the efforts of creative individuals by providing organizational support in developing projects for the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the global environment.

Artists Exhibited:
Ansel Adams, Morley Baer, Anne Brigman, Wynn Bullock, Paul Caponigro, Michele Clement, Robert Dawson, William Garnett, Joseph Holmes, Rolfe Horn, Philip Hyde, Koichiro Kurita, Eliot Porter, Michael Rauner, Ryuijie & Camille Derindinger, Penti Sammallahti, Sebastiao Salgado, Carleton Watkins, Brett Weston, Edward Weston and others.

www.earthisland.org

Mona Kuhn was born in Germany, raised in Brazil and later immigrated to the United States. She received her B.A. degree from Ohio State University in 1993 and later went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute and The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Mona Kuhn employs a visual language that is at once classical and contemporary. In her photographs she weaves together gestures taken from traditional iconography with the natural body language of her subjects. She does this with a fluidity and grace that comes from both intimacy with her subjects and a highly skilled mastery of the medium.

Mona Kuhn does more than merely present the body to the viewer. Beneath the calm, relaxed surfaces of her photographs lies an explosive energy: the artist’s controlled play with the power of sensuality. The compositions incorporate the flow of volume with tenuously held planes of focus that tempt the viewer and provoke the imagination. Each image explores dualities of human experience. Tension and uneasiness co-exist with sunlight and soft flesh. The subjects and their gestures are suggestive yet ultimately ambiguous. With only sparse reference to physical surroundings, the bodies seem to float in an idyllic picture space, part of a dreamlike narrative that exists just beyond the viewer’s comprehension.

Mona Kuhn’s photographs exist in a space created by the artist and subject alone, of which the viewer is given a single fascinating glimpse, suspended in time, where one senses the resilience and vulnerability of the human body. The artist works very close to her subjects, often with a depth of field of only a few inches. This closeness reflects her intimate relationship with her subjects and also creates an almost tactile picture surface. Real world and image world seem to blend together as her figures bring with them the blissful essence of nature and the soiled reality of human complexity.

A fiercely independent artist, Rondal Partridge has spent seven decades building a body of work that reflects his aesthetic integrity, eccentric temperament and fascination with every aspect of the world around him. The result is a visual history like no other: the changing landscapes of Yosemite National Park and the San Francisco Bay Area; striking images from junkyards, and flea markets, and an amazing assembly of still lifes, portraits and unclassifiable but arresting compositions.

As the son of celebrated photographer Imogen Cunningham and as an apprentice to Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams, Partridge began learning technique and developing his art almost from birth. Yet he has chosen to be as he says "the least publicized of the old fashioned California photographers."

This exhibition celebrates 75 years of his unique and incandescent work.

Excerpt from back cover of "Quizzical Eye:
The Photography of Rondal Partridge"
by Elizabeth Partridge & Sally Stein
published by Heyday Books.

The Scott Nichols Gallery is proud to present The Summer (Online) Show II, a selection of photographs from the gallery's collection. Included in the show are over 100 vintage and contemporary prints by Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernhard, Paul Caponigro, Imogen Cunningham, Monica Denevan, Rolfe Horn, Mona Kuhn, Danny Lyon, Michael Rauner, Sebastiao Salgado, Peter Stackpole, Brett Weston, and introducing Lucy Goodhart.

Scott Nichols Gallery honors the work of master photographer Paul Caponigro, one of the foremost landscape photographers alive today.