EDWARD WESTON (1886-1958)

Weston was invited, via Viennese émigré architect Richard Neutra, to select work by West Coast practitioners to represent their interpretation of the new modernist vision within the Film und Foto exhibition. This provided an opportunity for a large audience to note the strong kinship of ideals between the f64 group and German exponents of the New Objectivity.

Weston's Cypress, Point Lobos, perfectly expresses his commitment, shared by such German contemporaries as Albert Renger-Patzsch, to the primacy of a technical and visual clarity that would allow the powerful representation of any subject. 'I will laugh at -- no, pity --,' he asserted, 'anyone not liking, not feeling my cypress root.... I say, -- subject matter is immaterial -- the approach to the subject, the way it is seen and recorded is the critical test of a worker.' (quoted in Conger)