Photography Exhibition: The Santa Barbara Museum of Art - Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art periodically has wonderful exhibitions of photography. Right now they have a marvelous exhibition of the work of the American Photographer, Brett Weston. Weston is the son of the famous American Photographer, Edward Henry Weston who co-founded Group f/64.

Group f/64 was a group of seven 20th century San Francisco photographers who shared a common photographic style characterized by sharp-focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western US viewpoint. Group f/64 included luminaries such as Ansel Adams, Sonya Noskowiak and Imogen Cunningham.

The exhibition, Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow is the largest retrospective of Brett Weston's work in over 30 years.

This exhibition will run through August 16, 2009

This exhibition surveys Weston’s almost 70-year career. It presents more than 130 photographs which range from early vintage prints made in Mexico and California in the 1920s and 1930s, to East Coast images from the 1940s, to later landscape and nature photographs. It also includes prints made shortly before his death in Hawaii in 1993.

“While the presentation provides an unprecedented view of the form, composition and contrast that remained constants in Weston’s career, it also parallels the life of the artist, especially the familial and artistic relationship between Brett and his father, Edward. The exhibition illuminates their influence on each other, simultaneously freeing Brett from his father’s shadow and allowing him to take his own place in the pantheon of American photography.”

If you’re in the Santa Barbara area through mid August, I strongly suggest you take in this terrific exhibition.

As I travel, I love seeing the work of other photographers as I hope you do. If you know of a new photographic exhibition which you think the Blog should publicize, please contact me.