Brett Weston - Vintage Collection
Brett Weston - Vintage Collection
Volume 11 in the Portfolios of Brett Weston
Introduction by Wynn Bullock
Statement by Brett Weston
Afterword by Roger Aikin
15 reproductions, 44 pages
Printed by Dual Graphics in 400 Line Screen Quadtone
Originally Portfolio Published in 1976
12 1/2 x 12 1/2"
This is number one of fifty unique portfolios that Brett put together. For the portfolios he wrote a short statement saying that he preferred his photographs to be out in the world for others to enjoy rather than in his print cabinets. Many of these photographs were the last prints that he had made of each image. A number of the photographs in this portfolio have never before been reproduced.
Roger Aikin notes in the Afterword, "No complete inventory of Brett Weston's photographs exists, and it is unlikely that there will ever be one, because so many of his prints reside in private collections around the world, and many of those prints are unique. . . . Any attempt to document Weston's work is also complicated by the fact that he destroyed his negatives in 1991 on the occasion of his 80th birthday." As a consequence the reproduction of this portfolio provides the only opportunity to see these pictures.
The Vintage Collection portfolio includes a short essay by the photographer Wynn Bullock.
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.