Brett Weston - Baja California
Brett Weston - Baja California
Volume 6 in the Portfolios of Brett Weston
Afterword by Roger Aikin
Softbound Edition of 1000 Copies
Printed by SALTO in 600 Line Screen Quadtone
15 reproductions, 44 pages
12 1/2 x 12 1/2
Brett Weston first picked up a camera in Mexico as a fourteen-year-old when he spent several months there with his father Edward in 1924, and Baja California, made between 1964 and 1967, demonstrates his love of Mexico and its unique light and natural forms. The Baja California portfolio has no text or picture titles and no predetermined order, but the pictures in this portfolio, like those that came before and after it, were carefully selected from hundreds of photographs for their variety and continuity: Baja California contains four relatively deep-space landscapes with horizons, one medium close-up, and several relatively flat and abstract close-ups of sand, rocks, water, and plants.
The term lyric is usually understood to refer to poetry that is meant to be sung out loud, but it can also be applied to artworks in any medium that have musical or rhythmic qualities. These photographs are the most lyrical group Brett had created to date, and they pulsate with joyful, organic rhythms.
THE PORTFOLIOS OF BRETT WESTON
A NINETEEN-VOLUME SERIES
Between 1939 and 1980 Brett Weston produced eighteen limited edition portfolios of original photographs. He believed passionately in the power of his original prints and chose the portfolio as the way to reach an expanded audience while still maintaining control over image quality. Today, Weston's original portfolios are rare, expensive, and relatively inaccessible in museums, archives, libraries, or private collections. Many of the photographs in these new books have never before been reproduced. Published in a hardbound edition limited to 250 numbered copies. The softbound edition is limited to 1000 copies, and books are available individually or by subscription.
Printing technology now makes it possible, however, to bring the Brett Weston portfolios to a larger audience in reproductions that, in their rich detail, tonal scale and color, surface quality, and aesthetic appeal, are almost indistinguishable from the original prints. Printed in Belgium by Salto in 600-line screen quadtone on heavy coated stock, the photographs have been reproduced actual size whenever possible.
To recreate the feeling of the original portfolios, great care has been taken not only with the reproduction of the photographs, but with every aspect of these books. Where there is text in the portfolios, it is reproduced in facsimile, and the color of each book's cover has been selected to match the covers of the original portfolio cases.
The art historian Roger Aikin, a close friend of Brett's, has provided an introductory essay for each book in the series, writing that sets the photographs in the context of Weston's life and career. Dr. Aikin's critical analysis comparing the photographs of Brett and those of his father, published in 1973, remains the finest analysis of its type we have ever seen.