Edward Weston, Shell and Rock Arrangement, 1931 © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Edward Weston, Adagp, Paris, 2025. Courtesy Wilson Centre for Photography
Edward Weston is back in Paris after 30 years - at least his photographs. The Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) is celebrating the work of the great American photographer with the largest exhibition of his work in France in over 3 decades. Even though Weston’s work is part of our collective archive of 20th Century images - think lush images of pepper or the sensuous Oceano dunes - to see them IRL after such a long time is a profoundly moving and enchanting experience. It feels as if we’re discovering the images for the first time - at least on the wall of the MEP, as we stand so close to them - and them to us.
And it is a real shock to see the images. At least as powerful as seeing the original prints, we are moved by the arc of the 20th Century and the magic of the California landscape in the 1930s, a sort of Eden before mass tourism, consumerism, pollution, when the beauty of California’s nature was for the most part untouched. So, it’s a double journey through time we enter as we step into the 2nd floor galleries of the MEP. A journey through the world at the beginning of the 20th Century and a travel through the beginnings of modern photography.
Edward Weston, Chicago River Harbor, 1908 © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Edward Weston, Adagp, Paris, 2025. Courtesy Wilson Centre for Photography
The chronology of the exhibition takes us back through that time. At first, Weston is steeped in the tradition of pictorialist photography, when photography is trying to establish itself as worthy of being called an art and is doing its best to imitate painting: soft lighting, symbolic objects, models posing as if in an Ingres canvas.
Edward Weston, Charis, Santa Monica (Nude in doorway), 1936 © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Edward Weston, Adagp, Paris, 2025. Courtesy Wilson Centre for Photography
Edward Weston’s life changes when he meets Tina Mondotti, the activist, muse, lover, and photographer and the 2 of them move to Mexico between 1923 and 1926. Mondotti pushes Weston toward a more direct and impactful photography. At the same time, he had met in New York the avant-garde photographers Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler who considered photography as an art in itself, not an adjunct to other arts. They encouraged him to move away from pictorialist photography. Weston starts photographing everyday objects - eggs, peppers, as well as fruit and sea shells, looking at them as if they were sculptures.
Edward Weston, Pepper, 1930 © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Edward Weston, Adagp, Paris, 2025. Courtesy Gregg Wilson
In his lens, a toilet seat evokes a sensuous torso or a shell. It is almost a prequel to his famous photograph of Charis Wilson’s “Nude in Doorway” (1932). Weston talks about making visible “the essence of objects”.
Charis was his model and also his lover. The 2 of them explored another stage of Edward Weston’s work: the dunes of Oceano as well as the nudes series, contrasting the softness of the naked skin with the ripples of the sand.
Edward Weston, Nude on Sand, Oceano, 1936 © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Edward Weston, Adagp, Paris, 2025. Courtesy Wilson Centre for Photography
The exhibition ends with a smile: in the image titled Exposition of Dynamic Symmetry (1943) - almost a title Dali could have found - a group of his friends appear at each window of his house in Point Lobos where Weston died in 1958. In a world saturated with color and noise, Edward Weston’s gorgeous black and white prints reignite in viewers a deep sense of magic as simple everyday objects become icons.
~Jean-Sébastien Stehli
Edward Weston, Excusado (Toilet), 1926 © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Edward Weston, Adagp, Paris, 2025. Courtesy Wilson Centre for Photography
Edward Weston, Modernité Révélée. Maison Européenne de la Photographie. Until 25.01.26. mep-fr.org
Edward Weston, Shells, 1927 © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Edward Weston, Adagp, Paris, 2025. Courtesy Gregg Wilson
