[EDWARD WESTON/"PEPPER NO. 30"]
[EDWARD WESTON/"CABBAGE LEAF"]Susan Sontag cites Edward Weston as a remarkable manipulator of the visual world, a "visual hero" if you will. He captures the surreal and exaggerates reality...with the form of vegetables. Not exactly the easiest of feats, but perhaps this is what makes photography so enthralling; you can transform a pepper into a suggestive and sensual manifestation of curves and shadows, much like a woman's body. Suddenly the valleys and hills of a cabbage leaf look like carved marble or a crashing wave.
This manipulation glorifies the ordinary still life in a way that painting never could. Sure, you might have more opportunities to distort of color and form, but I think the black and white tonal range does more for this set of images than any shade/combination of red, yellow, or blue ever could.
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