Getty Museum

Kelp on Tide Pool, Point Lobos

Date

1944

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> In 1944 Edward Weston had begun a series of photographs at Point Lobos that are decidedly different from those he had made previously along the coast. These late landscapes and still-life studies are characterized by dark tones paired with compositions that, while thoughtfully framed, emphasize chaotic more than universal formal structures. In general, the images Weston made between 1942 and 1948 contain a higher percentage of dead and decaying subjects, like the dried grass, shriveled kelp, and lone feather of this photograph or the scraggly forms of Cypresses, Point Lobos (see [85.XM.452.25](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/103187/edward-weston-cypress-point-lobos-american-1944/)), than his earlier work. It has been suggested that the elegiac nature of these landscapes, in which mood and a resigned approach seem to play an important role, may have stemmed from emotional turmoil in his life. Marital problems, worries associated with World War II, and the onset of Parkinson's disease all took their toll on the artist. Weston claimed that death was not a theme in his late creations—just a part of the life he photographed—and denied that changes in his approach were related to pathology. Certainly the course of his work altered enough times during his career that inspiration for these late pictures could have been largely aesthetic. > > Adapted from Brett Abbott. *Edward Weston*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 86. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.