WESTON BRETT (1911 1993) Mendenhall Glacier

Sale 2170 - Lot 101

Unsold

Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000

WESTON, BRETT (1911-1993)
"Mendenhall Glacier." Oversize silver print, 15 1/2x18 inches (39.4x45.7 cm.), with Weston's signature, in pencil, on mount recto. 1973; printed 1980s

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Additional Details

Brett Weston: Voyage of the Eye, 65.
Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow, cover and 34.

Brett Weston developed a love for photography at the age of 13, when he accompanied his father, Edward, and Tina Modotti to Mexico. During this period he learned about the medium and printed with glossy silver paper. Edward was so impressed by the subtle tonalities achieved that he stopped working with platinum, which also marked his transition to straight photography.

Brett had his first exhibition when he was 15 when his pictures appeared alongside his father''s at the University of California, Los Angeles, which was organized by Barbara Morgan. Brett was chosen outstanding photographer at the 1941 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled "Image of Freedom." His photographic career was interrupted by the outbreak of WWII. Brett was eventually transferred to Signal Corps duty as a photographer and was stationed in New York City, where he worked with family friends such as Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Ruth Bernhard, Eliot Porter and Charles Sheeler.

After his father was diagnosed with Parkinson''s disease in 1946, Brett dedicated himself to printing Edward''s negatives, a series known as the Project Prints. After his father''s death, Brett traveled extensively through the Pacific Northwest, the Baja Peninsula, Japan, Hawaii and Europe focusing on abstractions and landscapes. As Brett aged, he became concerned with the fate of his negatives and was quite insistent that only he could bring out the nuances of his images. On his 80th birthday, in 1991, he burned a handful of his original negatives to ensure that no one would print them after his death. Later on, more negatives were also destroyed.

This image, of the Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska, is a strong and dynamic example of how Brett distinguished himself from his father. In John Szarkowski''s "Looking at Photographs," he compares the father and son''s vision stating, "When Edward and Brett photographed the same sand dune, the father''s showed the sensuous, plastic sculpture of natural forms; the son''s . . . emerged as constructions of flat planes, straight lines and sharp angles." Here, the jagged white ice forms reflected in the still black glacial waters seem to leap from the surface, mesmerizing the viewer with the pure beauty of the image.