Name of Artist: Edward Weston
Dates of Artist's Life: Edward Weston was born March 24th, 1886. He died January 1st 1958.
Edward Weston was born in 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. He went to Oakland Grammar School in Chicago. Weston's first pictures were of the parks of Chicago and his Aunts farm. His works were first exhibited in 1903 at the Art Institute of Chicago. Three years later he moved to California and opened a portrait studio in a Los Angeles suburb. After working briefly as a surveyor for San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, he began working as an itinerant photographer. In 1908 Weston went to the Illinois College of Photography in Effingham, Illinois.
He peddled his wares door to door photographing children, pets, and funerals in California. In Los Angeles, he was employed as a retoucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio. In 1909, Weston moved on to the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer and demonstrated outstanding abilities with lighting and posing. In 1937, Weston received the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a photographer, which freed him from earning a living as a portrautust. The works for which he is famous consist of sharp, stark, brilliantly printed images of sand dunes, vegetables, rock formations, trees, cacti, shells, water, and human faces are among the finest of 20th-century photographs.
By the early 1920s, Weston had already established an international reputation for mildly swoony images in gray-beige tones. He had also grown restless with pictorialism, which took its inspiration from impressionism, symbolism, In time he found a new expressive vocabulary in the angles and hard lines of constructivism and cubism. His images were soft-focus and diffused images, with a sentimental approach that got popular at the time.
Dates of Artist's Life: Edward Weston was born March 24th, 1886. He died January 1st 1958.
Edward Weston was born in 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. He went to Oakland Grammar School in Chicago. Weston's first pictures were of the parks of Chicago and his Aunts farm. His works were first exhibited in 1903 at the Art Institute of Chicago. Three years later he moved to California and opened a portrait studio in a Los Angeles suburb. After working briefly as a surveyor for San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, he began working as an itinerant photographer. In 1908 Weston went to the Illinois College of Photography in Effingham, Illinois.
He peddled his wares door to door photographing children, pets, and funerals in California. In Los Angeles, he was employed as a retoucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio. In 1909, Weston moved on to the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer and demonstrated outstanding abilities with lighting and posing. In 1937, Weston received the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a photographer, which freed him from earning a living as a portrautust. The works for which he is famous consist of sharp, stark, brilliantly printed images of sand dunes, vegetables, rock formations, trees, cacti, shells, water, and human faces are among the finest of 20th-century photographs.
By the early 1920s, Weston had already established an international reputation for mildly swoony images in gray-beige tones. He had also grown restless with pictorialism, which took its inspiration from impressionism, symbolism, In time he found a new expressive vocabulary in the angles and hard lines of constructivism and cubism. His images were soft-focus and diffused images, with a sentimental approach that got popular at the time.