Rocks and Pool, Pebble Beach

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Rocks and Pool, Pebble Beach

Artist Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993)

Date1971

DimensionsMount: 22 × 25 in. (55.9 × 63.5 cm)
Image: 15 1/8 × 18 3/4 in. (38.4 × 47.6 cm)

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LineGift of Margaret and Howard Bond

Object number

2008.117

Not on View

Label TextThe camera for an artist is just another tool. It is no more mechanical than a violin if you analyze it. Beyond the rudiments, it is up to the artist to create art, not the camera. Son of influential photographer Edward Weston, Brett Weston was referred to as “the child genius of American photography.” At the age of 14 he travelled to Mexico with his father, where, using a Graflex 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ camera he began his photographic career. When he was 17, Brett Weston’s photographs were included in the 1929 German exhibition Film und Foto, perhaps the most important modern visual media exhibition held between the wars. Combining superlative printing technique with modern design sensibility, throughout his career Weston continued to produce bold abstract images while photographing such mundane objects as plant leaves, knotted tree roots, and piles of kelp along the beach. In this image light reflects from the wet rocks making them appear to undulate under a flesh-like surface. The small pebbles isolate the larger forms, creating an abstract design of light and dark.