© BRETT WESTON ARCHIVE Dune, 1934
With a career that spanned six decades and over 100 solo exhibitions, Brett Weston was one of the most accomplished and successful photographers in American history. Unfortunately, his contributions have long been overshadowed by those of his more famous father, Edward Weston. In 2008 and 2009, a traveling exhibition titled Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow did much to set the record straight.
Out of the Shadow presented 136 photographs from the 1920s through the 1980s ”” the largest retrospective of Brett Weston’s work in 30 years. The exhibition was organized by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art in cooperation with the Brett Weston Archive. While it included iconic, traditional landscapes ”” such as his most famous image, “Canal, Holland, 1971” ”” it also documented his lifelong obsession with abstraction.
More of this feature article can be read in the Summer 2010 issue.