"Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow" at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art "? the collection's first stop on a national tour "? includes 136 photographs that span the Brett Weston's entire career and show abstractions, urban landscapes and nature in black-and-white contrasts.
The photographs come from a large collection of Weston's works donated to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art by Christian Keesee, founder of the metro-based The Brett Weston Archive, and will show through May 18.
LIFE
Weston's life behind the lens started in 1925, when he was just 14, and he continued to experiment with form and composition until his death in 1993. During his career, his shots were exhibited in shows with such talents as Edward Steichen, Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, Man Ray and Charles Sheeler; however, his work is often overlooked in contemporary art history.
"Brett Weston has had no major retrospective since the Seventies, so he was overdue for one," said Alison Amick, coordinating curator for the exhibit and associate curator at the museum. "Many people are more familiar with the work of his father, Edward Weston, and a little less familiar with Brett's work. That's why Stephen Bennett Phillips, the organizing curator, titled the exhibit 'Out of the Shadow.'"
On the film shown in the exhibition, a story is told about Weston visiting London and, instead of documenting famous monuments like Parliament or Westminster, he chose to shoot close-up abstractions of rust on the London Bridge. He took photos in California, New Mexico and New York, as well as in Japan, Central America and Europe, but in each place, he sought out the overlooked details instead of capturing the bigger landscapes.
"? Allison Meier
