Nude, 1925, also known as Torso, is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Edward Weston in 1925. It is part of a series of six nude photographs that he took of his model and lover, Miriam Lerner. [1] [2]
Weston returned to California from Mexico after a three years residence in 1925. The time spent in Mexico had a great influence on him, specially in the artistic, cultural and political fields, since he got to meet artists like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and had a relationship with the photographer Tina Modotti. He settled in California, and met Miriam Lerner, who soon became his model and lover. Weston admitted that after his return from Mexico, he found himself in "a new period in my approach and attitude towards photography". He took great inspiration from his relationship with Lerner, especially for a series of six nudes, the first important body of work that he made after his return to the United States. He mentioned how he was affected by "the full bloom of Miriam’s body — responsive and ever-stimulating". [3] [4]
His pictures are impressive and innovative because of their high degree of cropping. Weston chose to focus in the torso and hands of Lerner, unlike his previous work with a female model, Tina Modotti, also a fellow photographer, which consisted mostly of close-up portraits and often depicted her surroundings. Weston pictures of Lerner, by the contrary, focus in photographic croppings, bringing the viewer to a closer proximity with the model. In this case, the lighting and the twisted position of the nude torso gives it a sense of movement, and also a particular sculptural quality. [5] [6]
Weston decided to print this picture in palladium, and not in platinum, despite the fact that he used back then both mediums. By using palladium, he allowed not only for the depiction of a lustrous surface, but also for a bigger range of gray mid-tones. [7] [8]
A print of this photograph, the only known to be in a private collection, was sold by $871,500 at Christie's, on April 6, 2017. [9]
There are prints of this photograph at the J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and at the Special Collections at the University of California, in Santa Cruz. [10] [11] [12]
Edward Henry Weston was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and especially Californian, approach to modern photography" because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.
Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actor, and revolutionary political activist for the Comintern. She left Italy in 1913 and moved to the United States, where she settled in San Francisco with her father and sister. In San Francisco, Modotti worked as a model and, later, as a photographer. In 1922 she moved to Mexico, where she became an active member of the Mexican Communist Party.
Ruth Bernhard was a German-born American photographer.
Manuel Álvarez Bravo was a Mexican artistic photographer and one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography. He was born and raised in Mexico City. While he took art classes at the Academy of San Carlos, his photography is self-taught. His career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1990s with its artistic peak between the 1920s and 1950s. His hallmark as a photographer was to capture images of the ordinary but in ironic or Surrealistic ways. His early work was based on European influences, but he was soon influenced by the Mexican muralism movement and the general cultural and political push at the time to redefine Mexican identity. He rejected the picturesque, employing elements to avoid stereotyping. He had numerous exhibitions of his work, worked in the Mexican cinema and established Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana publishing house. He won numerous awards for his work, mostly after 1970. His work was recognized by the UNESCO Memory of the World registry in 2017.
Margrethe Mather was an American photographer. She was one of the best known female photographers of the early 20th century. Initially she influenced and was influenced by Edward Weston while working in the pictorial style, but she independently developed a strong eye for patterns and design that transformed some of her photographs into modernist abstract art. She lived a mostly uncompromising lifestyle in Los Angeles that alternated between her photography and the creative Hollywood community of the 1920s and 1930s. In later life she abandoned photography, and she died unrecognized for her photographic accomplishments.
"in artistic matters Margaret was, of course, the teacher, Edward (Weston) the pupil" — Imogen Cunningham
Nancy Wynne Newhall was an American photography critic. She is best known for writing the text to accompany photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but was also a widely published writer on photography, conservation, and American culture.
Theodore Brett Weston was an American photographer.
Nude photography is the creation of any photograph which contains an image of a nude or semi-nude person, or an image suggestive of nudity. Nude photography is undertaken for a variety of purposes, including educational uses, commercial applications and artistic creations. The exhibition or publication of nude photographs may be controversial, more so in some cultures or countries than in others, and especially if the subject is a minor.
Sonya Noskowiak was a 20th-century German-American photographer and member of the San Francisco photography collective Group f/64 that included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. She is considered an important figure in one of the great photographic movements of the twewntieth century. Throughout her career, Noskowiak photographed landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Her most well-known, though unacknowledged, portraits are of the author John Steinbeck. In 1936, Noskowiak was awarded a prize at the annual exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists. She was also represented in the San Francisco Museum of Art’s “Scenes from San Francisco” exhibit in 1939. Ten years before her death, Noskowiak's work was included in a WPA exhibition at the Oakland Museum in Oakland, California.
Johan Hagemeyer was a Dutch-born horticulturalist and vegetarian who is remembered primarily for being an early 20th century photographer and artistic intellectual.
Alma Ruth Lavenson was an American photographer active in the 1920s and 1930s. She worked with and was a close friend of Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and other photographic masters of the period.
Helen Charis Wilson, was an American model and writer, most widely known as a subject of Edward Weston's photographs.
Nautilus is a black-and-white photograph taken by Edward Weston in 1927 of a single nautilus shell standing on its end against a dark background. It has been called "one of the most famous photographs ever made" and "a benchmark of modernism in the history of photography."
Nude is a black and white photograph taken by Edward Weston in 1936. It shows an apparently nude woman with her arms wrapped around her legs while she sits on a blanket in bright sunlight against a darkened doorway. The dynamic balance of the light and dark accentuate the curves and angles of the woman's body; at the same time her face and all but the slightest hint of her pubic area are hidden from view, requiring the viewer to concentrate on her arms, legs, feet and hands. It is an image of a nude that concentrates solely on the forms of the body rather than the sexuality. The model was his muse and assistant, Charis Wilson, whom he married a year later.
Dody Weston Thompson was a 20th-century American photographer and chronicler of the history and craft of photography. She learned the art in 1947 and developed her own expression of “straight” or realistic photography, the style that emerged in Northern California in the 1930s. Dody worked closely with contemporary icons Edward Weston, Brett Weston and Ansel Adams during the late 1940s and through the 1950s, with additional collaboration with Brett Weston in the 1980s.
Fine art nude photography is a genre of fine-art photography which depicts the nude human body with an emphasis on form, composition, emotional content, and other aesthetic qualities. The nude has been a prominent subject of photography since its invention, and played an important role in establishing photography as a fine art medium. The distinction between fine art photography and other subgenres is not absolute, but there are certain defining characteristics.
Nude, 1925 is a black and white photograph taken by Edward Weston in 1925. It holds the record for Weston's most expensive photograph after being sold for $1,609,000 at the Sotheby's New York on 8 April 2008, to Peter MacGill of the Pace-MacGill Gallery. The photograph was part of the Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs, which was then auctioned.
Steel: Armco, Middletown, Ohio is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Edward Weston in 1922. The picture has the dimensions of 23 by 17,4 cm.
Two Shells, also known as Shells, is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Edward Weston, in 1927. It was part of a series containing 26 photographs of sea shells from the same year, including Weston's famous Nautilus.
Sibyl Anikeef was an American photographer. She worked for the Federal Art Project, and lived variously in New York City, San Diego, Chicago, Carmel by the Sea, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. She is best known for her portrayal of the Monterey Peninsula and portraits of fisherman, still lives, and landscapes. She used various names including Sibyl Brainerd, and Sibyl Brainerd Freed.