Many of the images contained in Brett Weston: A Personal Selection were created from 1980-1986, highlighting the ongoing creative genius of this West Coast master photographer still producing after sixty years of disciplined commitment to his artistry. Brett Weston: A Personal Selection realized his longtime desire, featuring 101 brilliant images considered by Weston to be his most important unknown work. In November of 1996, Oklahoma City collector Christian Keesee acquired from the Brett Weston Estate the most complete body of Weston’s work.įor many years, Brett Weston envisioned a book that would share with his audience a unique collection of previously unpublished photographs from his private archive. Works by Brett Weston are included in collections of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He died in Kona Hospital on Januafter suffering a massive stroke. He maintained a home in Waikoloa that was built by his brother Neil Weston, and later moved to Hawaii Paradise Park.

Brett Weston lived part time on the Big Island of Hawaii and in Carmel, California for the final 14 years of his life. Brett and his wife Dody loyally set aside their own photography to help Edward after he was unable to print his own images due to Parkinson's disease, which claimed Edward's life in 1958.īrett Weston married and divorced four times. Brett didn't like this naturally enough, he felt that even when he had done the thing first, the public would not know and he would be blamed for imitating me.' Edward Weston - Daybooks - May 24, 1930.īrett Weston used to refer to Edward Weston lovingly as 'my biggest fan' and there was no rivalry between the two photographic giants. 'Brett and I are always seeing the same kinds of things to do - we have the same kind of vision. He was a true photographic equal and colleague to his father and 'one should not be considered without the other.' Donald Ross, a photographer close to both Westons, said that Brett never came after anyone. Brett Weston was credited by photography historian Beaumont Newhall as the first photographer to make negative space the subject of a photograph. Brett preferred the high gloss papers and ensuing sharp clarity of the gelatin silver photographic materials of the f64 Group rather than the platinum matte photographic papers common in the 1920s and encouraged Edward Weston to explore the new silver papers in his own work.

This was a favorite location of his father Edward and a location that they later shared Brett's with wife Dody Weston Thompson. He began photographing the dunes at Oceano, California, in the early 1930s. He often flattened the plane, engaging in layered space, an artistic style more commonly seen among the Abstract Expressionists and more modern painters like David Hockney than other photographers. Weston's earliest images from the 1920s reflect his intuitive sophisticated sense of abstraction. He began showing his photographs with Edward Weston in 1927, was featured at the international exhibition at Film und Foto in Germany at age 17, and mounted his first one-man museum retrospective at age 21 at the De Young Museum in San Francisco in January, 1932. Weston began taking photographs in 1925, while living in Mexico with Tina Modotti and his father. Van Deren Coke described Brett Weston as the 'child genius of American photography.' He was the second of the four sons of photographer Edward Weston and Flora Chandler. Brett Weston (originally Theodore Brett Weston December 16, 1911, Los Angeles–January 22, 1993, Hawaii) was an American photographer.

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