Lot Essay
Upon his return to the United States from Mexico in early 1927, Weston began work on a series of nudes of Christel Gang, a German woman and stenographer who helped to copy the first volume of his daybooks. On February 5, Weston wrote, "Two negatives, nudes of C., both well seen. We started so late that exposures were of necessity prolonged to 5 min. with some resulting movement. A start has been made. C. has a body of exaggerated proportions. To overstate her curves became my preoccupation." Later, Weston relates the nudes of Christel to those made of Anita Brenner's back while in Mexico, "Nudes of C. again...Repeating my successes? No, I have always felt that I could go on with variations." (Daybooks II, pp. 3-4.) Soon after making these images, Weston sent prints to Modotti in Mexcio, who replied with great approval. And Weston personally saw the work as "'...among my finest seen work.'" (Conger, Edward Weston: Photographs, fig. 534.) Alan Trachtenberg observes, "Weston's headless torsos, hips, buttocks, pubic areas acheive their remarkable formal elegance by explicit denial of individuality. Modesty or discretion might be a motive; his models were often his lovers. But the pictures present themselves as formal esthetic decisions based on a definite conception of medium. They decide to exclude the contingency of a frontal encounter that would betray a relationship, one that exists in time, is subject to change, is vulnerable to inner ambiguity and to danger." ("Weston's Thing Itself," Yale Review 65:1, Oct., 1975, p. 113, c.f. Forms of Passion, p. 140.)
The print offered here is one of several prints Weston gave to the photographer Consuelo Kanaga, during a visit to California. "Consuela [sic] took to New York three platinum prints and several glossy prints of mine to try for an exhibit the next season. She will see Stieglitz, - so I told her that if he expressed desire, to show him the work. And I especially hoped that Charles Sheeler would see the work." (Daybooks II, p. 12.) This print was acquired directly from Kanaga by Mssrs. Miller and Plummer for their collection in 1974. Soon after the acquisition, this print was included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1975 Weston retrospective curated by fellow Group f/64 member, Willard Van Dyke.
The print offered here is one of several prints Weston gave to the photographer Consuelo Kanaga, during a visit to California. "Consuela [sic] took to New York three platinum prints and several glossy prints of mine to try for an exhibit the next season. She will see Stieglitz, - so I told her that if he expressed desire, to show him the work. And I especially hoped that Charles Sheeler would see the work." (Daybooks II, p. 12.) This print was acquired directly from Kanaga by Mssrs. Miller and Plummer for their collection in 1974. Soon after the acquisition, this print was included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1975 Weston retrospective curated by fellow Group f/64 member, Willard Van Dyke.