?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
EDWARD WESTON (1886-1958)/COLE WESTON (1919-2003) Pepper No. 30. Silver print, the image measuring 9⅜x7⅜ inches (23.8x18.7 cm.), the mount 15x13 inches (38.1x33 cm.), with the Negative by Edward Weston stamp with Cole Weston's signature in pencil, and the title and negative date also in pencil in an unknown hand, on mount verso; with a Dody Weston Thompson Collection of Edward Weston Photographs label with her signature in ink on mat verso. 1930; printed 1970s
Provenance: Dody Weston Thompson Collection; to the Collection of Dr. James and Debra Pearl
This collection features a comprehensive grouping of photos that illustrate the trajectory of Weston's prolific career, including Pepper No. 30, considered one of the most iconic modernist images. The making of this photograph fostered Weston's development as an artist. Taken in 1930, he hit a stride in his still-life practice after placing this pepper in a reflective tunnel to achieve the perfect atmosphere of light, elevating the form to something almost anthropomorphic. During this time, Weston began to see similarities of form everywhere: "Life is a coherent whole – rocks, clouds, trees, shells, torsos, smokestacks, and peppers are interrelated, interdependent parts of that whole." A viewer can visually follow this thought when looking at the work Weston made in the following period. In 1936, Weston photographed one of his favorite models, Charis, sitting in a door frame wrapped up within herself. The folding of her limbs mirrors the soft slopes of the pepper. Weston's intricate posing of Charis creates deep shadows within her body, twisting her figure to accommodate what he wants to be enveloped with light. This manipulation and mastery of light transcends Weston's work, making what we would usually consider a portrait into a still life and vice versa. When looking at Pepper No. 30 and Nude (Charis, Santa Monica) next to each other, it's easy to see the two wildly different subjects become one and the same in Weston's eyes.
Reproduced: Amy Conger, Edward Weston: Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography (CCP/The University of Arizona), cat. no. 606/1930
