Google McAlpin to see some excellent virtually never reproduced EW portraits.
Some think "peppers" and "nudes" when thinking about EW, but his Mexican and subsequent portraits were far more powerful than many are aware. Personally, I think his Mexican portraits were his very best work.
Sorry for interjecting David McAlpin in this thread, but he was a major figure in American photography, and a patron of my early work. I first met him in New York in 1959 when I was eighteen. Over the next several years he purchased my work for his personal collection, twenty of which are in the collection he gifted to Princeton. It was years later that I corresponded with Peter Bunnell about my gifting more recent photographs to make a representative collection of my work. After years of conversation on the matter he retired, leaving the project as unfinished business. However, after his retirement we corresponded over other matters, and his knowledge and contributions to the history of photography are to be praised. I was very sorry to learn of his passing.
"...The object in itself; that is the secret of Edward Weston’s art. A magnificent technician, he can teach his pupils as Bach taught his: but composition remains his secret..."
I got a bit further, but sunlight is calling me -- now that the temp has finally hit the 40s...us wimpy Californians! But I think in a couple hours I'll ride my bike to and along the coast -- catch a possible sunset -- as rains are coming as sure as winter.
I love this sentence from the above mentioned article.
Photography to-day smells too much of magnesium. It is also too much the expression of strident or squeaky personalities, artificially creating senseless and arbitrary patterns.