Edward Weston: Photography and Modernism

This third and culminating volume in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' outstanding series on Edward Weston (1886-1958) examines the greatest works of Weston's career, his stylistic development, and especially the ways in which he responded to contemporary modernists. Comparative illustrations of work by Picasso, Brancusi, O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Henrietta Shore, and other artists provide a better understanding of these influences. Following an introduction by Theodore Stebbins, three sections of photographs with accompanying essays demonstrate the entire range of Weston's work: his work as a pictorialist before 1920; experimental portraits, landscapes, and still lifes from the Mexican Period; his landmark still lifes of shells and peppers; small-format portraiture and fragmentary nudes; the classic "high modernist" series of nudes and dunes from the 1930s; and his late abstract landscapes. Included are brilliant prints of Weston's most famous images, including Pepper 30, Excusado, and Palma Cuernavaca, as well as numerous unfamiliar photographs that broaden our understanding of this great photographer.