Brett Weston (1911 - 1993) was an American photographer from Los Angeles, California. He seemed destined from birth to become a remarkable photographic artist - his father was Edward Weston, a highly influential and innovative photographer. Brett began taking photos in 1925 while living in Mexico with his father and mounted his first one-man retrospective aged 21 at the De Young Museum in San Francisco in January, 1932.
Brett Weston's career spanned nearly seven decades and he was ranked one of the top ten photographers collected by American museums in the final decade of his life. His images are in the collections of countless institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, the Museum of Photographic Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US and Canada.
Style
His earliest images reflect his intuitive and sophisticated sense of abstraction. His style of flattening the plane was more commonly seen in Abstract Expressionists and painter David Hockney than in other photographers. Weston preferred to use high gloss papers and gelatin silver photographic materials for his work due to their clarity. He is credited by art historian Beaumont Newhall as the first photographer to make the negative space the subject of a photograph.
Weston's images are beautiful and timeless. They give a sense of place whilst being simultaneously abstract and contemplative.
