EDWARD WESTON (1886–1958)

The dunes are endless. You’ll never run out of new subjects.’ Edward, who was brimming with excitement over the material he was finding, assured me he would never run out where he was, because the dunes were changing constantly right before our eyes. He was right – if you examine the dune pictures carefully, you can almost always find a soft spot of moving sand somewhere in the landscape. –Charis Wilson

Here, in one of the most sculptural and sensual of his photographs of sand dunes from Oceano, California, Weston captures an ethereal scene rendered almost entirely in middle to light grey tones that hover on the edge of white. The transcendent aspect of Nature, such a foundational part of Weston’s practice, is replete in this compelling image. For a fuller discussion of Weston’s work made in Oceano, California, see the catalogue note for lot 303.

Conger locates seven prints of this image in institutional collections including the following: Art Institute of Chicago; George Eastman House, Rochester; The Huntington Library, Los Angeles; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.