Leaves of Grass

摘要

In 1941, modernist photographer Edward Weston embarked upon an epic crosscountry trip to create what would become his last major body of work. Commissioned to create photographs for a luxury edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, he set out from his home in Carmel, California with his wife, Charis Wilson, with the aim of creating a series of images that, he wrote at the time, "present the same kind of broad, inclusive summation of contemporary America that Whitman himself gave." Although their trip was cut short by the United States' entrance into World War Ⅱ in December 1941, the pair nonetheless managed to cover 19,000 miles in seven months, traveling through 24 states in total.Weston was continually driven to refine his style, and the works in the Leaves project are markedly different from his best-known modernist works, such as his famed Pepper No. 30,1930. Leaves shows Weston working in a late style, in which he experimented with new directions, appropriated styles and subjects from his peers, and drew upon experiences, interests, and skills associated with earlier stages in his development. Notably, many of the images present a deadpan, documentary approach and persistent interest in regional cultures and folkways that closely links the work to that done by photographers in the employ of the Farm Security Administration, as well as to Weston's own documentation of Mexican folk art in the 1920s.