Brett Weston - Hawaii: Leaves and Lava
Brett Weston - Hawaii: Leaves and Lava
Volume 14 in the Portfolios of Brett Weston
Introduction by Boone Hekili Morrison
Afterword by Roger Aikin
Softbound Edition of 1000 Copies
Printed by Dual Graphics in 400 Line Screen Quadtone
48 pages 15 Reproductions
12 1/2 x 12 1/2
Originally Portfolio Published in 1980
The story of Brett Weston's portfolios mimics the way one might respond to a new romance. Always an eager traveler, Weston would discover a new place and become infatuated. Some locations that were the subject of portfolios he would visit only once or twice, like Japan or Europe, but he developed longer relationships with Baja California, White Sands, Oregon, Alaska, or Hawaii, returning several times over a period of years, exploring and realizing new visual possibilities, and finally formalizing his experience by issuing a portfolio.
The photographs in Hawaii are some of the most joyful, sensitive, and lyrical Weston ever produced....As he had done in previous portfolios, Weston juxtaposes different subjects with similar forms to make surprising connections.
Weston was almost seventy years old when this portfolio was printed, and it was his last to be composed of entirely new work....The British art historian Kenneth Clark once proposed that some great artists like Michelangelo, Rembrandt, or Monet achieve what he called "a style of old age"—an art more of spirit than substance, in which complexity and fireworks are pared away and what remains is essential, simplified, and grand. In his final portfolio of a place, Brett Weston had arrived at such a clarified, lofty, harmonious vision.
—From the Afterword by Roger Aikin
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.