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Lot Essay
I have worked with peppers again, surprising myself! Sonya brought several home, and I could not resist, though I thought to have finished with peppers. But peppers never repeat themselves: shells, bananas, melons, so many forms, are not inclined to experiment – not so the pepper, always excitingly individual. So I have three new negatives, and two more under way. – Edward Weston
Edward Weston recognized the summer of 1929 as the start of a particularly significant, prolific period in his oeuvre. He devoted much of this time to photographing textured, twisted vegetables, notably peppers of ‘marvelous convolutions’ whose intriguing forms enamored Weston so fully they distracted him from producing commissioned works. He created at least thirty different depictions of sculptural peppers within four days in August, 1930. This infatuation with the pepper as ideal photographic subject is best explained by the artist himself:
I have done perhaps fifty negatives of peppers: because of the endless variety in form manifestations, because of the extraordinary surface texture, because of the power, the force suggested in their amazing convolutions.
As an image, Pepper No. 30 has become so iconic it is nearly synonymous with the artist himself. It is arguably one of the images that represents him most frequently, and graces the cover of his intimate Daybooks volume II. This is unsurprising considering Weston deemed the pepper series a ‘peak of achievement,' placed with his 'finest expression.' According to Conger, he made at least twenty-five prints of this image, making it his most popular pepper (Conger, Edward Weston, fig. 606/1930).
To be sure, much of my work has this quality – many of my last year’s peppers… and in fact all the new ones, take one into an inner reality – the absolute – with a clear understanding, a mystic revealment. This is the “significant presentation” that I mean, the presentation through one’s intuitive self, seeing “through one’s eyes, not with them”: the visionary. My recent work more than ever indicates my future (Conger, fig. 610/1930).
Edward Weston recognized the summer of 1929 as the start of a particularly significant, prolific period in his oeuvre. He devoted much of this time to photographing textured, twisted vegetables, notably peppers of ‘marvelous convolutions’ whose intriguing forms enamored Weston so fully they distracted him from producing commissioned works. He created at least thirty different depictions of sculptural peppers within four days in August, 1930. This infatuation with the pepper as ideal photographic subject is best explained by the artist himself:
I have done perhaps fifty negatives of peppers: because of the endless variety in form manifestations, because of the extraordinary surface texture, because of the power, the force suggested in their amazing convolutions.
As an image, Pepper No. 30 has become so iconic it is nearly synonymous with the artist himself. It is arguably one of the images that represents him most frequently, and graces the cover of his intimate Daybooks volume II. This is unsurprising considering Weston deemed the pepper series a ‘peak of achievement,' placed with his 'finest expression.' According to Conger, he made at least twenty-five prints of this image, making it his most popular pepper (Conger, Edward Weston, fig. 606/1930).
To be sure, much of my work has this quality – many of my last year’s peppers… and in fact all the new ones, take one into an inner reality – the absolute – with a clear understanding, a mystic revealment. This is the “significant presentation” that I mean, the presentation through one’s intuitive self, seeing “through one’s eyes, not with them”: the visionary. My recent work more than ever indicates my future (Conger, fig. 610/1930).