【50摄影大师介绍】之二, 爱德华·韦斯顿 Edward Henry Weston by 华翰斋

50 Masters of Photography （2） --- Edward Weston

Edward Henry Weston （March 24, 1886 - January 1, 1958） was a 20th century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography."

Weston was born in Chicago and moved to California when he was 21. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft-focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however, he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images.

Over the course of his forty-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography" because of his focus on the people and places of the American West.

In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 X 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.

In 1947 Weston was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and he stopped photographing soon thereafter. He spent the remaining ten years of his life overseeing the printing of more than 1,000 of his most famous images.

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本期评论:

云漫

Edward Weston是我最喜欢的摄影师之一。

Edward Weston和Ansel Adams是F64小组里面最著名的两位大师。他们最大的贡献之一就是带领摄影界从模仿绘画的画意摄影走出来，强调照相机前所未有的精确记录细节和影调的能力，为摄影发展成为一门独立艺术起了关键性作用。

可是Weston和Adams的艺术风格又如同相隔遥远的两级。Adams的镜头下记录的，是美国西部雄伟的自然风光。看Adams的照片，能感受到摄影师的冷静客观，大自然宏大场景被他显毫毕现地记录在大幅胶片上。Adams还是严格的技术派，他发明的Zone System 使得摄影师能精确完美地控制图像的影调。而Weston则更象如同一个内心充满激情又异常敏感的艺术家，他对形状有着异乎寻常的敏感，他的作品里让人过目不忘的不是壮丽河山，是那些看似极为平常的物件和场景：青椒，海螺，树干，沙丘。这些极为普通的东西，在Weston的镜头下，如同他的人体一样，竟然是那样的性感，那样的婀娜多姿，美丽的难以置信，让人感慨在艺术家手里，摄影竟然可以有这样的化腐朽为神奇的魔力。

当他后来拿到Guggenheim Fellowship, 把镜头对准美国西部风景的时候，他也不象Adams那样拍摄大场景，而是非常善于截取自然界和人类活动的片段，靠构图和质感给我们带来一幅幅冲击力强大的作品。

虽然我非常尊重Ansel Adams，可我从来不是他的严格意义上的fan。但每次看Weston的作品，我都会由衷地钦佩一个伟大的摄影师的超乎寻常的艺术眼光和惊人想象力。我觉得对一个艺术家来说，这是最重要的能力。