Did Edward Weston tone his prints?

[Chester McCheeserton]

Just got back from a museum visit today where had the opportunity to view bunch of prints made by him, (not his sons)

According to the catalog published by the museum the prints were made by him between 1937 and 1944.

It had been a while since I saw EW prints up close and in person, but what I noticed most of all was the amazing shadow detail but still showing contrast and rich blacks.

The prints seemed to have a cool, very slight bluish or even purple tint, that I have only seen when gold toning. Was this just the paper he was using and the color he got from amidol?
Did he use selenium toner? Or gold? Can someone confirm if prints made during that time period were on Azo or something else?

It was a humbling experience that took down my confidence several notches that I know how to make good prints or operate a view camera.

[Pieter]

Just got back from a museum visit today where had the opportunity to view bunch of prints made by him, (not his sons)

According to the catalog published by the museum the prints were made by him between 1937 and 1944.

It had been a while since I saw EW prints up close and in person, but what I noticed most of all was the amazing shadow detail but still showing contrast and rich blacks.

The prints seemed to have a cool, very slight bluish or even purple tint, that I have only seen when gold toning. Was this just the paper he was using and the color he got from amidol?
Did he use selenium toner? Or gold? Can someone confirm if prints made during that time period were on Azo or something else?

It was a humbling experience that took down my confidence several notches that I know how to make good prints or operate a view camera.

I would have to go back to reading his daybooks for a possible answer--if you haven't read them, they give wonderful insights into the man and his work. Or you could drop a line to the Huntington Library--they have quite the Weston collection there. Or his grandson Kim, still in Carmel. Or the Weston Gallery in Carmel, run by an ex-daughter-in-law. I think.

[Drew Wiley]

He had different styles and used different papers over his career. Merg Ross, of this forum, would probably know. Lots of his earlier work was conspicuously warm-toned.
Later things took on that Azo and amidol f/64-ish cold tone look, but I don't know the specifics. I have seen a lot of his prints up close, and his full range of textual content isn't all that hard to replicate. One doesn't typically notice the lack of detail in the shadows in little contact prints anyway. He son, Brett, of course, exploited bold blank blacks for graphic effect in actual enlargements - an entirely different style.

Gold toner could lend an annoying overtly bluish-black to Azo images. I've never seen that effect in EW prints. And I wonder if he could even afford gold toner. I routinely use it, but at much greater dilution than most of the formulas call for, which seem to waste gold chloride like crazy.

[Chester McCheeserton]

I would have to go back to reading his daybooks for a possible answer--if you haven't read them, they give wonderful insights into the man and his work. Or you could drop a line to the Huntington Library--they have quite the Weston collection there. Or his grandson Kim, still in Carmel. Or the Weston Gallery in Carmel, run by an ex-daughter-in-law. I think.

Thanks, I have read them tho it was over 20 years ago....These were at the Huntington...The people I've spoken with there and at other museums...I think things like gold or selenium toning are a bit of an abstract concept for them, even curators that specialize in photography...Good call on Kim Weston - he prob would know..

[Chester McCheeserton]

Gold toner could lend an annoying overtly bluish-black to Azo images. I've never seen that effect in EW prints. And I wonder if he could even afford gold toner. I routinely use it, but at much greater dilution than most of the formulas call for, which seem to waste gold chloride like crazy.

do you use it on Ilford warmtone to cool things down?

[Fungus]

According to Ansel Adams: a Biography by Mary Alinder, Weston did not tone his prints. It came up in the biography in the context of Adams not liking to view Weston’s prints because, untoned, they had a garish greenish cast.

Here's the exact quote:

Untoned prints became anathema to him, and from this time on he found it difficult to enjoy Edward’s work, which was always untoned and whose blacks, Ansel complained, possessed a greenish cast that struck him as ghoulish.

[j.e.simmons]

I've read that Weston used a paper made by the company that became Xerox rather than Azo.

[interneg]

what I noticed most of all was the amazing shadow detail but still showing contrast and rich blacks.

Lens flare, camera flare, emulsion halation are all factors that are routinely ignored in favour of leaping on facile chemical obsessions. The paper curve shape is where you want to look - the rest is basic process control.

The prints seemed to have a cool, very slight bluish or even purple tint, that I have only seen when gold toning.

Chloride papers can go quite cold blue/black quite easily - especially in very normal developers. At the end of the day, Kodak usually claimed that Azo gave a neutral black with Illustrators' Azo as a warmer variant, Velite/ Velox being colder and Athena & Aristo warmer contact speed papers.
Weston claimed to like Haloid's (who became Xerox) contact paper - but the differences between chloride contact paper formulations are often not great. It may well have been that single-weight Haloid was cheaper than the Kodak (or Agfa/ Ansco etc) product.
There were warmtone variants that used various other heavy metal salts, reverse addition steps at precipitation etc to cause particular crystal habits to from.

[EarlJam]

On a somewhat adjacent topic: My grandfather's family knew Weston in the early part of his career, when he was scraping together a living making portraits and marriage photos. I have one signed print of my grandparents. from 1920, that's very warm in tone. Additionally, some of the smaller proof prints have a pinkish tone, although I don't know if that was intentional or just the paper degrading over time.

[Dugan]

EarlJam, that is a beautiful image. What a treasure!