Why do Edward Weston' prints suck?

[Merg Ross]

Ahhh, that is what I suspected. Did he show them with direct sunlight hitting the print, do you recall? That would certainly be enough to transform the prints that I saw.

--Darin

Do I recall? Darin, as if yesterday. I always sat on one of his barstools, being young and needing elevation. Edward had a little tripod easel that he would place the prints on under the skylight. However, there was also additional illumination from the glass doors that faced the ocean, and depending on the time of year provided sunlight or light from the bright coastal overcast --- the type you are familiar with!

I'm not sure he changed his mind about viewing conditions --- he was only human, not a machine, and prints from the same negative sometimes varied in contrast and brightness.

[jnantz]

i was at the mfa in boston a while back and their photography collection was the whos who
but the quality of the images wasnt what i would have expected from the creme de la creme ..
i overheard peoples conversations who were gazing and they were confused why these images were even there ...

i suppose different museums have different quality prints and there is always a lot of hype
surrounding some of these images ...
i looked at it a bit differently and was impressed because some of the photographs were the origins of whatever
style was being representative, and love of a style has to do with taste ...
like going to a burmese resturant and disliking burmese food, the food is good, but not bart of ones pallet ...

[Ben Calwell]

One person's "too dark," might be another's "just right."

[Kirk Gittings]

So you put a print intended to be lit by skylight, AND put it in a dim museum next to another print with 4x as much light, and its going to look pretty muddy. I sure wouldn't want one of my prints judged that way.

Unfortunately once a print leaves ones possession it has a life of its own in terms of care, presentation and meaning. Some of the framing/matting jobs I have seen on my prints left me utterly flabbergasted.

[Drew Wiley]

There was a dealer/gallery across the street for awhile that inherited a bunch of Weston's "seconds" from a relative in the same neighborhood, who had collected
these way back when, himself a well-known photographer in these parts. They were the real deal, and he managed to get 5K to 7K apiece for a few of them, but
they were indeed rather dark, so-so subjects, and not the kind of thing that would get anyone famous. EW was a superb printer. But I don't don't know of anyone ever who doesn't have to weed out their "work prints" from time to time. All these guys made plenty of bad prints. Some threw them away, some stored them off
somewhere, and maybe some got sold reasonably to friends who couldn't afford the good ones, or were outright gifts. I don't know. I've done the same kind of thing with so-so prints I didn't consider real "keepers".

[Kirk Gittings]

Some years ago there was a small Strand exhibit at the Georgia O'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. It was so dimly lit at first the prints seemed darkly printed but once your eyes adjusted they still looked darkish. That was the dimest lit exhibit I had ever seen. I asked a guard about it and he said that the lending institution had dictated the lighting level as a condition of the loan.

[Kevin Crisp]

I think I stumbled upon the same display in Los Angeles Neil did. I was not a LF photographer at the time, I did not know who Edward Weston was, and I had two hours to kill between appointments and I ended up following a line of people into the gallery. The prints were very well illuminated and looked gorgeous. As I recall they had one of his cameras (a universal, maybe) under glass as well. They looked nothing like prints I've seen in dark places (Getty, Huntington Library, LA Library, etc.) since then.

[BrianShaw]

That explains the photographs by Ansel Adams last month displayed at the Getty, it was so dark I thought my eyes were going bad. ...

I don't know how I missed that, especially considering that I pass by Getty twice a day.

But I had the same reaction many years ago when I saw an exhibit of AA prints "over the years" at the FOP gallery in SF. The lighting was dim but the difference between the same neg printed at various times was astounding . The early ones were almost all printed very very dark. Too dark for my liking. But what do I know - especially considering that i agree with the statement in post #23. And back them ny eyes were really good.

[Michael Mutmansky]

Some years ago there was a small Strand exhibit at the Georgia O'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. It was so dimly lit at first the prints seemed darkly printed but once your eyes adjusted they still looked darkish. That was the dimest lit exhibit I had ever seen. I asked a guard about it and he said that the lending institution had dictated the lighting level as a condition of the loan.

This happens a lot with travelling exhibits... the lending institution is willing to share, but not if the prints are going to be destroyed in the process. Most conservators understand the role of light and especially short wavelength light (UV) has on image fading and damage. They therefore will often place illuminance and total exposure (illuminance x duration) limits on the pieces. This leads to dimly lighted exhibits.


---Michael

[Drew Wiley]

Gosh. Even Babe Ruth probably struck out more times than he hit a home run. The average person just remembers the positive side of the story. Cole Weston pretty
much standardized the printing of only very select negatives specifically for sale. So his prints are likely to be even more consistent than the vintage ones by his
father. Otherwise, I have seen the gamut one way or another. EW was not unique in that respect. There seems to have been a trend at one point in printing dark.
Merg would know better than me if my hunch is right. But lots of those more brooding images certainly don't come across well in dim display light.