The Innately Beautiful Forms Of Nature

In the lowly cabbage, the fragrant onion, the more aristocratic artichoke there is utility. They boast vitamins and nourishment, but are they beautiful? Offhand one would smile tolerantly and reply, "Well, hardly,"-proving the fallacy of the hasty answer. In California, at Carmel-by-the-Sea, there is a photographer who can reply differently. Edward Weston can, in fact, refute the superficial response by the most tangible evidence to the contrary. He does so here, and in so doing opens up an opportunity for the lover of beauty in form to delve into new fields.

When he was sixteen, which was, in truth, some thirty years ago, his father, a Chicago physician, presented him with a square box camera. Forthwith there came heinous instances of hookey from school to photograph, followed by mental hookey from work in the wholesale department of Marshall Field's. A summer in California terminated with some "stake punching" for the old Salt Lake Railroad. This developed, oddly enough, into a dash at professional photography, which was, Mr. Weston says, "canvassing, house to house, with my camera photographing everything from family groups to funerals."

Then a studio job; his own studio; success; deliberate destruction of everything he had done because he no longer believed in it; Mexico and successful exhibits and finally wider recognition and his present work. "I do not," Mr. Weston says, explaining the viewpoint so well demonstrated in his photographs, "wish to impose my personality upon Nature; to indulge in 'self expression.' On the contrary, my aim is, without prejudice or falsification, to become identified with Nature so that what I record is not an interpretation-my idea of what Nature should be-but a revelation; an absolute, impersonal recognition. What I seek is a presentation of the significance of facts so that they are transformed from things seen to things known."

Fortunately it is difficult to become too personal with the impersonal lens eye. Only with effort can the camera be made to lie. So the honest photographer is forced to approach Nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, of desire to learn. The camera replaces inadequate, obsolete methods, as a vital way of recording and communicating one's understanding of the essential and living forces in the world today. Photography has its own technique and approach, which needs no concern with outworn forms, means or ends. Thus has Mr. Weston worked in seeking an intimate acquaintance with the actual and innately beautiful forms of Nature. His is the understanding and observing eye. He has recognized the simple, exquisite beauty of Nature forms that escape most of us; this ability gives to his art an inestimably higher value than that of many.