Brett Weston - Twenty Photographs
Brett Weston - Twenty Photographs
Volume 12 in the Portfolios of Brett Weston
Introduction by Rossario Mazzeo
Afterword by Roger Aikin
Softbound Edition of 1000 Copies
Printed by Dual Graphics in 400 Line Screen Quadtone
Originally Portfolio Published in 1977
20 reproductions, 60 pages
12 1/2 x 12 1/2
The subjects in Twenty Photographs are the same ones that had attracted Weston all his life the landscape at infinity, selected fragments of the natural landscape such as rocks, ice, water, trees, and cacti, as well as detritus of the man-made environment such as rusting metal or peeling paint. The photographs in this portfolio were all made with a medium-format camera, a Rollei SL66 that Brett had been given by the Rolliflex Corporation. The use of this camera, as opposed to the 8x10-inch view camera that Weston had used throughout his career enabled a greater spontaneity, which a number of the photographs in this portfolio reveal.
Twenty Photographs is dedicated to his oldest friends, Don and Estelle Ross. The Rosses accompanied him on many of his photography trips and had introduced him to Baja California, the subject of his sixth portfolio. The introduction is by the famous clarinetist and photographer Rosario Mazzeo who had managed the personnel at the Boston Symphony Orchestra for over thirty years, and who had moved to Carmel in 1960.
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.