Brett Weston

Brett Weston (actually: Theodore Brett Weston, born December 16, 1911 in Los Angeles, California, † January 22, 1993 in Hawaii ) was an American photographer and second son of photographer Edward Weston and brother of photographer Cole Weston. His best-known works were produced in the dunes at Oceano, California, a passion he shared with his father Edward Weston.

Life

Brett Weston, born 1911 in Los Angeles, was the second son of famous photographer Edward Weston. At the age of 14 years, his father took him out of school and moved with him to his photo studio to Mexico. He was early on the father's assistant and learned the photographers craft from the bottom up. Through his father, he met famous painters such as Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco and photographers like Tina Modotti know. These artists had a formative influence on his later career. Early on, he outperformed the father of passion and originality, and the curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Van Deren Coke, called the "child" literally by name: " Brett Weston is a young genius of American photography. "

Weston returned in 1926 back to California and assisted his father in his Glendale portrait studio where he already sold his own photographs. He exhibited his first paintings in 1927 at UCLA. He got his first photo exhibition in the same year at Jake Zeitlin 's Bookstore and Gallery in Los Angeles.

At age 18, Weston already got the full attention of the international critical trade press after his work in film and photo exhibitions in Stuttgart, by famous photographers such as Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, Paul Outerbridge ( 1896-1958 ), and his own father examined and were assessed.

Weston worked as a photographer from 1936 for the Works Progress Administration and as a cameraman for the film company 20th Century Fox in the Department of War film in 1941 before he stopped there again later.

In 1939, its portfolio images had already been published by San Francisco. During the time in the army, he met the photographer Arthur Rothstein know on Long Iceland.

After the war and his discharge from the U.S. Army, Weston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. At this time the east coast of America was his favorite subject. Brett Weston's first book publication appeared in 1956.

From the 50s to the 70s, the style of his photographs was subject to sharp changes, to the abstraction. He spent the late 70s and 80s mainly in Hawaii where he confessed: " In this environment, there is everything what it would be worth the one reinterpreted it photographically. "

On January 22, 1993 Brett Weston died at his home in Hawaii at the age of 81 years.

• Brett Weston, a Personal Selection, 1986. ISBN 0-9616515-0-4
• Master Photographer, 1989. ISBN 0-9616515-3-9