I have been a fan of Edward Weston for decades. Late in the fall of 2007 I saw an announcement that January 1, 2008 would mark the 50th anniversary of Weston’s death, was fast approaching. I wanted to do an homage in honor of his work. Lela Rae is an art model who is also a Weston fan so we decided to work together to create some images similar to some of Weston’s classic images.

It was already November so we headed for some western Michigan sand dunes to emulate some of Weston’s classic dune images.

 

The weather did not cooperate. The sand was wet, cold, and packed from recent snow and rain so we couldn’t get the cascading sand effect in Weston’s images. The temperature was 37 degrees and a cold wind was blowing across the dunes from Lake Michigan. We persevered and created several images.

Some of our images were similar to Weston’s work and for some our images we did our own thing.

For the rest of our Weston project we met in December and worked in my studio.

We did several images that emulated Weston’s classic works.

We also did our own thing which was just as important as creating images in the spirit of Edward Weston’s work. It was a fun project.

Weston’s images are an important part of my photography library. Tina Modotti was one of Weston’s favorite models (see the 1923 Modotti image above). He was her photography mentor during the “Mexican Renaissance” and she became a photographer in her own right.

Originally posted February 3, 2021. Updated January 20, 2022.

Links

Edward Weston – official web site

Weston Gallery – original works by Edward Weston

Tina Modotti, Behind the Camera and Out of Weston’s Shadow – The New York Times

You can find books with Edward Weston’s images in the Beautiful Photography Books section of my Amazon.com powered photography store.