About This Artwork

Edward Weston
American, 1886-1958

Washbowl, 1925

Platinum print
24.3 x 18.9 cm
Harold L. Stuart Endowment, 1987.377

Photography
Not on Display

Edward Weston arrived in Mexico in 1923 with his lover, the photographer Tina Modotti, at a time when art was entering politics and native people and art forms were being incorporated into the national culture. Weston also effected a revolution in his own work at this time, turning to spare compositions and humble subjects like this washbasin. In 1927, for a show at the Los Angeles Museum (now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), he wrote, “Those who do not find beauty in cabbages, smoke stacks, plumbing fixtures, as well as in clouds, flowers, faces, will miss the real import of this exhibit.” Weston later helped found f/64, a group of seven photographers that included Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham, whose works are on view nearby. Named after the smallest aperture that would provide the greatest possible focus across all planes of the camera picture, f/64 held exhibitions and published statements to promote a modern movement of photographic purism.