Welcome to the Edward Weston Bibliography Blog

Five Decades of Edward Weston in Print

The extraordinary life and work of acclaimed American photographer Edward Weston has been well documented in the sixty-plus years since his death on New Year’s Day 1958. Insights into his artistic legacy abound in journals, books and exhibition catalogues and the interplay of Weston’s individual and professional lives has been revealed through his personal daybooks, his own published writings, and the countless publications penned by historians, critics, friends and intimates. Today, our perception of this seminal American modernist is filtered largely through the lens of those writing long after Weston’s demise. But retrospective evaluations tell only part of the tale. What of his own lifetime? How did his contemporaries react to Weston’s photographs as they broke new ground and progressed through five decades of aesthetic exploration? And how was he perceived by—and in relation to—the other photographers, artists and thinkers of his time? The Edward Weston Bibliography Blog reveals just that.

This Blog is an extension of an exhaustive (and seemingly never ending!) project to document all published references to Weston up until the time of his death. These include everything from exhibition reviews to society column chit-chat, appraisals of his work to editorials Weston penned in response to political events. This fascinating panoply of published references— found in books, periodicals, ephemera and newspapers—is further enhanced by illustrations that range from iconic Weston photographs to images even the most scholarly among us have never seen. To date, the Edward Weston Bibliography encompasses over 4,000 confirmed bibliographic citations dating between 1906 and 1958. Identification of these publications is the result of a comprehensive review of myriad resources from around the globe, including Weston’s correspondence; museum, library and other archival collections; scores of newspapers; complete runs of photographic periodicals; numerous books; and previously published bibliographies. To ensure the accuracy of our data, we acquired a copy of each publication cited—either the original publication itself or a direct reproduction of it. This reliance on primary source material, rather than secondary citations, is key to the unique quality and ultimate success of our endeavor.

Join us as we share some of the most important, amusing, surprising, seemingly trivial, but always revelatory items in our vast Bibliography. Items we have come to describe as our Edward Weston “good bits.” We hope you enjoy and appreciate them—and Weston— as much as we do. We look forward to reading your responses!

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