Edward Weston
American · 1886–1958
American photographer whose precisely rendered studies of peppers, shells, nudes, and Point Lobos landscapes — recorded in his celebrated Daybooks — championed "the thing itself" and redefined photography as an art of direct, unmanipulated seeing.
Wikipedia ↗“Good composition is only the strongest way of seeing. It cannot be taught, because it is not a set of rules but a state of heightened awareness. When you are fully present before your subject, the composition reveals itself — the frame finds its own edges.”
English
“Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual. A rock, a bit of kelp, a weathered board — these are not humble subjects. Seen with enough intensity, they contain the entire visible world.”
English
“The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh. I am not trying to interpret — I am trying to present. The pepper is more than a pepper when you truly see it.”
English
“The print is the end product of the photographer's vision. The negative is the score, but the print is the performance. You can have a perfect negative and ruin it in the printing, or you can take a flawed negative and, through the alchemy of the darkroom, reveal what was latent in the seeing.”
English
“To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. The greatest photographs are made when the photographer forgets everything he has learned and simply sees.”
English