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拍品專文
Edward Weston was at a turning point in his career and his life when he made this photograph. He had been restless in his work since around 1920. He began then to make some geometrically inspired compositions. But it was not until he travelled to Middletown, Ohio in October 1922 that he turned a corner and became truly 'modernist.'
He had gone to visit his sister May and her husband John before his departure for Mexico. They paid for the trip and also helped him to continue on to New York City. Weston wrote about his visit, 'But most of all in importance was my photographing of Armco, the great plant and giant stacks of the American Rolling Mill Co. That day I made great photographs, even Stieglitz thought they were important! And I only showed him unmounted proofs.' (The Day Books of Edward Weston, Vol. I, Mexico, The George Eastman House, 1966, p. 8)
Weston had made the pilgrimage to show his work to Stieglitz with some trepidation but he noted later that Stieglitz had said, 'If I were publishing Camera Work I would ask you for this breast, these torsoes and these smoke-stacks.' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 6)
Before leaving New York he visited Stieglitz again and showed his photographs to Georgia O'Keeffe. About the Armco photos, Weston recorded her to say, 'These stacks too are very fine...' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 6) Stieglitz's parting words included, 'You have shown at least several prints which have given me a great deal of joy. And this I can seldom say of photographs.' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 6)
Back in California, before his departure to Mexico, he wrote about a visit with his friend Johan Hagemeyer, 'I gave him a print of my Stacks' and recorded Hagemeyer to say, 'I have never before demanded a print from you Edward - but I must have a copy of that.' He would return again and again to it: 'It is a thing I wish I had made...' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 10)
When Weston moved to Mexico, he decorated his room with only three pictures, 'Picasso, Hokusai - and one of my own photographs - the Smoke Stacks of course.' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 20)
Weston knew when he made the photographs at the Armco factory that he had decisively moved away from his earlier pictorialist influenced work and there was no turning back. More than seventy years after they were made, the eminent photohistorian Beaumont Newhall wrote about them, 'These photographs are a complete depature from his earlier work, not only in subject matter, but in their stark, uncompromising realism.' (Newhall, Supreme Instants: The Photography of Edward Weston, Little, Brown and Co., 1986, p. 19)
The print, loaned by the Trust to the Center for Creative Photography over twenty years ago, supplemented the Center's unique Edward Weston Archive and has been available to Weston scholars and the general public enhancing their appreciation and understanding of Weston's life and work.
He had gone to visit his sister May and her husband John before his departure for Mexico. They paid for the trip and also helped him to continue on to New York City. Weston wrote about his visit, 'But most of all in importance was my photographing of Armco, the great plant and giant stacks of the American Rolling Mill Co. That day I made great photographs, even Stieglitz thought they were important! And I only showed him unmounted proofs.' (The Day Books of Edward Weston, Vol. I, Mexico, The George Eastman House, 1966, p. 8)
Weston had made the pilgrimage to show his work to Stieglitz with some trepidation but he noted later that Stieglitz had said, 'If I were publishing Camera Work I would ask you for this breast, these torsoes and these smoke-stacks.' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 6)
Before leaving New York he visited Stieglitz again and showed his photographs to Georgia O'Keeffe. About the Armco photos, Weston recorded her to say, 'These stacks too are very fine...' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 6) Stieglitz's parting words included, 'You have shown at least several prints which have given me a great deal of joy. And this I can seldom say of photographs.' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 6)
Back in California, before his departure to Mexico, he wrote about a visit with his friend Johan Hagemeyer, 'I gave him a print of my Stacks' and recorded Hagemeyer to say, 'I have never before demanded a print from you Edward - but I must have a copy of that.' He would return again and again to it: 'It is a thing I wish I had made...' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 10)
When Weston moved to Mexico, he decorated his room with only three pictures, 'Picasso, Hokusai - and one of my own photographs - the Smoke Stacks of course.' (Daybooks, ibid., p. 20)
Weston knew when he made the photographs at the Armco factory that he had decisively moved away from his earlier pictorialist influenced work and there was no turning back. More than seventy years after they were made, the eminent photohistorian Beaumont Newhall wrote about them, 'These photographs are a complete depature from his earlier work, not only in subject matter, but in their stark, uncompromising realism.' (Newhall, Supreme Instants: The Photography of Edward Weston, Little, Brown and Co., 1986, p. 19)
The print, loaned by the Trust to the Center for Creative Photography over twenty years ago, supplemented the Center's unique Edward Weston Archive and has been available to Weston scholars and the general public enhancing their appreciation and understanding of Weston's life and work.