Edward Weston

Edward Weston: Life Work

Published by Lodima Press

Hardcover Edition: OUT OF PRINT

Special Limited Edition: Limited to 100 copies

Published on the occasion of a major traveling exhibition, Edward Weston: Life Work is a 110-photograph survey of this great American artist. Containing photographs from all phases of Weston’s long and varied career, from his first nude in 1909 to his final landscape at Point Lobos, California, in 1948, previously unpublished masterpieces are interspersed with his well-known signature images.

Never before have Weston’s photographs been reproduced with such fidelity to his originals. For those who have not had the opportunity to see original prints by Edward Weston, but who know his photographs only through reproduction, this book will come as a revelation. In keeping with Weston’s adherence to the contact print, the photographs are reproduced actual size, and on two different paper stocks and multiple ink colors to reflect Weston’s choice of papers and finish. Printed in Belgium by Salto2 in a combination of 600-line screen quadtone and tri-tone plus two-color for Weston’s early platinum prints, Edward Weston: Life Work is a landmark in the publishing of fine-art photography books.

Weston began his career as a studio photographer working in the soft-focus Pictorialist mode, and ended as the quintessential sharp-focus Modernist. Edward Weston: Life Work encompasses the full historical range of his imagery, starting with his largely unheralded studio period. Weston’s three-year stay in Mexico in the mid-1920s marked his final break from the confines of the studio and his transition to sharp-focus “straight” photography; the book contains a generous selection of his Mexican work, followed by his celebrated shell and vegetable still lifes, sculptural nudes, sand-dune abstractions, and other landscapes both early and late. Portraits of his friends, lovers, and fellow artists are included from all stages of his career. A series of essays by Sarah M. Lowe illuminates each phase of Weston’s oeuvre. A first-hand remembrance by Dody Weston Thompson, Weston’s last assistant, gives the reader an in-depth look at Edward Weston the man, as well as insightful writing about his photographs.

 Edward Weston: Life Work is drawn from the private collection of Michael P. Mattis and Judith G. Hochberg, whose joint writing in the Preface charmingly details their passion and quest for the work of this modern master.

A “must-have” publication for every photography lover’s library.

The special edition includes a toned silver gelatin contact print of Tina Modotti’s Portrait of Edward Weston, 1924.

110 reproductions, 252 pages, 12″ x 12-1/2″

Limited Edition with collector print.