Cypress, Point Lobos, 1929

Details

EDWARD WESTON (1886-1958)
Cypress, Point Lobos, 1929
gelatin silver print
credited and numbered '42' in unknown hand in pencil on verso
7½ x 9½in. (19 x 24cm.)

Provenance

As lot 27.

Literature

Weston, My Camera on Point Lobos, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1950, pl.16, titled 'Cypress Root'; Newhall (ed.), Edward Weston: The Flame of Recognition, Aperture, 1971, p.29; Edward Weston: Masters of Photography, Aperture, 1988, p.45; Newhall (ed.), The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Aperture, 1990, pl.II/9, titled 'Cypress Root'; Conger, Edward Weston: Photographs, Center for Creative Photography, 1992, fig.559/1929; Mora (ed.), Edward Weston: Forms of Passion, Harry N. Abrams, 1995, p.163; Watts (ed.), Edward Weston: A Legacy, Merrell, 2003, p.184, pl.64.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Weston was invited, via Viennese émigré architect Richard Neutra, to select work by West Coast practitioners to represent their interpretation of the new modernist vision within the Film und Foto exhibition. This provided an opportunity for a large audience to note the strong kinship of ideals between the f64 group and German exponents of the New Objectivity.

Weston's Cypress, Point Lobos, perfectly expresses his commitment, shared by such German contemporaries as Albert Renger-Patzsch, to the primacy of a technical and visual clarity that would allow the powerful representation of any subject. 'I will laugh at -- no, pity --,' he asserted, 'anyone not liking, not feeling my cypress root.... I say, -- subject matter is immaterial -- the approach to the subject, the way it is seen and recorded is the critical test of a worker.' (quoted in Conger)

More from Photographs

View All