Brett Weston - Ten Photographs
Brett Weston - Ten Photographs
Volume 5 in the Portfolios of Brett Weston series
Afterword by Roger Aikin
Softbound Edition of 1000 Copies
Printed by SALTO in 600 Line Screen Quadtone
10 reproductions, 36 pages
12 1/2” x 12 1/2”
The ten photographs in this portfolio are contact prints from 11 x 14 -inch negatives, the largest format Brett Weston ever used, and the largest practical format for any but the most ardent devotee of view cameras and contact prints.
Brett employed this camera between 1944 and the early 1960s, when he realized that new medium-format roll-film cameras like the Rollei SL66 (which made relatively small 2 1/4-inch square negatives), were so good that he could abandon contact prints altogether.
By 1963, Weston felt confident that he had enough 11 x 14 prints to select ten pictures that fit his criteria for a portfolio quality, variety, unity, and ease of printing and since he did not use the 11 x 14 camera after this time, he may have intended this portfolio as a farewell to the big camera itself.
Like his previous portfolio, Fifteen Photographs, the title Ten Photographs is neutral, and the portfolio has no text or predetermined order. As a group, these pictures are quieter, more relaxed, and somewhat less shocking or abstract than his previous portfolios, perhaps because of the limitations of the camera." "Volume 5 in the Portfolios of Brett Weston
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.