Getty Museum

Bathers (85.XM.257.1)

Date

1919

Medium

Platinum print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Object ID

d20bf375-c278-42c4-8bf1-78b7374c88d2

> The years 1915 to 1920 were ones of great change for photography in America. As examples of Cubist, Dadaist, and Futurist paintings were shown in greater numbers and with greater frequency through publications and exhibitions, like the Panama­ Pacific International Exposition of 1915, American photographers began to respond to the aesthetics of international art. The East Coast photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976), for example, started using his camera to transform ordinary household items into abstract compositions. Strand's prints, published in Camera Work in 1916 and 1917, were probably familiar to Edward Weston through that periodical. Another contemporary, the photographer and painter Charles Sheeler (1885-1965), was experimenting too, in his case with the aesthetics of Cubism. Weston was acutely aware of these developments, and his own creations from 1916 through the early 1920s began to show more angular compositions and fewer literary allusions.Here Weston balanced a careful geometry of form with human subjects. The picture is composed around the strong lines of the pool's edge and a complementary shaft of light, which reflects on the surface of the water. The boy at left, poised with arms outstretched and knees bent on the brink of diving into the pool and disrupting the intricate balance of reflections, infuses the highly controlled composition with a sense of imminent instability. > > Weston made this picture while visiting the Claremont home of Paul Jordan-Smith (1895-1971), a friend who is portrayed in another Weston photograph in the Getty collection (see [84.XP.904.7](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/45267/edward-weston-paul-jordan-smith-american-1922/)). The boys are likely Weston's two eldest children, Brett and Chandler, who would have been about eight and nine years old, respectively. Those closest to Weston—his family, friends, colleagues, and lovers—were commonly the subjects of the photographer's experimentations in the medium. > > Brett Abbott. *Edward Weston*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 18. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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