Renaissance Man
Best known for his close-up still life photographs of nautilus shells and peppers, Edward Weston began his career as a commercial portraitist. But a 1922 meeting with photographer Alfred Stieglitz inspired Weston to explore more personal work, and the next year he set off on a journey to Mexico that helped establish him as one of the major artists of his day. Edward Weston: Mexico, an exhibit that debuts at the Phoenix Art Museum August 9, explores this transformation. It highlights Weston’s pivotal years as part of the Mexican Renaissance, when he began to photograph still lifes and developed the sharply focused and pure style he is renowned for.
Curator Rebecca Senf says visitors to the exhibit will find fine art prints as well as a rich mixture of artifacts, which serve to present a total view of Weston’s life and artistic growth during the 1920s. In addition to snapshots and letters Weston sent to his friends and family in the United States and prints by his lover and muse, Tina Modotti, pages from his Daybooks are also on display. These journal excerpts allow visitors to view a photograph alongside a description in Weston’s own handwriting.
The exhibit is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography, a photographic archive and research facility in Tucson, co-founded by Weston’s contemporary Ansel Adams. Expansive new exhibition spaces created as part of the Phoenix Art Museum’s $50 million renovation in 2006 made room for shows such as the Weston exhibition, which will be on display through November 15. phxart.org
— Claire McGregor
