WESTON, EDWARD

born May 9, 1850, near Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, Eng. died Aug. 20, 1936, Montclair, N.J., U.S. British-born American electrical engineer and industrialist who founded the Weston Electrical Instrument Company. Weston studied medicine at the insistence of his parents; but, after receiving his medical diploma in 1870, he went to New York City, where he was employed as a chemist. While working with an electroplating company, he decided that a generator would be more efficient than batteries as a source of power for electroplating. He subsequently invented and manufactured a highly successful electroplating dynamo. Overshadowed by others in the field of lighting (arc and incandescent), Weston in 1886 turned his attention to the design and manufacture of electrical measuring instruments. In 1888 he organized the Weston Electrical Instrument Company, which became world famous for its high-quality electrical products. Weston became a U.S. citizen in 1923. born March 24, 1886, Highland Park, Ill., U.S. died Jan. 1, 1958, Carmel, Calif. one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, important for formulating a pictorial aesthetic that dominated American photography for several decades. A camera enthusiast from boyhood, Weston began his professional career by opening a portrait studio in Tropico (now Glendale), Calif. His early work was in the style of the pictorialists, photographers who imitated Impressionistic paintings by suppressing detail and manipulating the image in the darkroom. In 1915 Weston saw an exhibition of modern art that led him to reject the atmospheric effects of pictorial photographers in favour of a new emphasis on abstract form and sharp resolution of detail. Renouncing his former work, he set about formulating the aesthetics and techniques that formed the basis of his new style. His goal was realism. He worked with large-format cameras and small apertures to achieve the greatest possible depth of field and resolution of detail. He never used an enlarger, preferring to retain the fine detail and complete range of tones possible only with contact prints. He invariably printed the full negative, and he refused to manipulate the image in the darkroom. The result was sharp and realistic pictures that convey the beauty of natural objects through skillful composition and subtleties of tone, light, and texture. In 1922 Weston traveled to New York City, where he met the photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand. In 1923 Weston moved to Mexico, where the artists Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jos Orozco hailed him as a master of 20th-century art. Back in California in 1927, Weston made a series of monumental close-ups of seashells, peppers, and halved cabbages, bringing out the rich textures of their sculpturelike forms. Two years later, he made the first of many photographs of the rocks and trees on Point Lobos, Calif., which were published in The Art of Edward Weston (1932). The same year, Weston joined Group f.64, whose single exhibition constituted a turning point in the history of American photography. In 1936 Weston began a series of photographs of nudes and sand dunes at Oceano, Calif., which are often considered his finest work. The following year he became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim fellowship for experimental work and spent two years taking the photographs that appeared in California and the West (1940). After being stricken by Parkinson's disease, Weston realized he would soon be unable to work and made his last photographs on Point Lobos in 1948. They appeared in My Camera on Point Lobos (1950). The last 10 years of his life were spent supervising the printing of his best negatives. Additional reading Edward Weston and Ben Maddow, Edward Weston, His Life and Photographs, rev. ed. (1979), is the definitive collection of his photographs, coupled with a biography. Beaumont Newhall and Amy Conger (eds.), Edward Weston Omnibus: A Critical Anthology (1984); and Beaumont Newhall, Supreme Instants (1986), also collect Weston's photographs and biographical information.