Still Life with Bananas and Orange

Edward Weston

Still Life with Bananas and Orange

Gelatin silver print, Photograph

7 7/16 x 9 5/16 in.

1927

Edward Henry Weston (1886-1958) began photographing at the age of sixteen after receiving a Bull’s Eye #2 camera from his father. Weston’s first photographs captured the parks of Chicago and his aunt’s farm. In 1906, following the publication of his first photograph in Camera and Darkroom, Weston moved to California. After working briefly as a surveyor for San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, he began working as an itinerant photographer. In Los Angeles, he was employed as a retoucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio. In 1909, Weston moved on to the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer and demonstrated outstanding abilities with lighting and posing. Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. This would be his base of operation for the next two decades. Weston became successful working in soft-focus, pictorial style; winning many salons and professional awards. Weston gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies. Articles about his work were published in magazines such as American Photography, Photo Era and Photo Miniature. In 1912, Weston met photographer Margrethe Mather in his Tropico studio. Mather becomes his studio assistant and most frequent model for the next decade. After moving back to California in 1926, Weston began his work for which he is most deservedly famous: natural forms, close-ups, nudes, and landscapes. Between 1927 and 1930, Weston made a series of monumental close-ups of seashells, peppers, and halved cabbages, bringing out the rich textures of their sculpture-like forms. Weston moved to Carmel, California in 1929 and shot the first of many photographs of rocks and trees at Point Lobos, California.

“To clearly express my feeling for life with photographic beauty, present objectively the texture, rhythm, form in nature, without subterfuge or evasion in technique or spirit, to record the quintessence of the object or element before my lens, rather than an interpretation, a superficial phase, or passing mood-- this is my way in photography.” So wrote Edward Weston in 1927, the year in which he made this still life composition. The skin of the fruit is rendered in precise detail, with the bruises and marks on the bananas becoming graphic strokes of the camera's "brush." The pocked surface of the citrus fruit is also clearly delineated, while the orange's center reveals an anomalous organic form. He uses bananas with bruises and he shows the deformed part of the orange. This speaks to his beliefs in photography and life, photos should not try to be perfect, just keep them the way they are, and they will be beautiful. Also the way that the bananas surround the orange, making it stand out more and contrast with the many bananas

This piece was chosen because photography has always been a way of capturing beauty in an instance, in a way of pausing that beauty forever. This piece has such contrast and the subject matter makes one stop and think. Most still lifes pause beauty with their color and portray perfect beautiful things. Yet this shows imperfections and lack of color, though it is still a way of showing life- imperfect and sometimes drained of color yet everyday has beauty in it. While the bananas may have bruises that also means they are ripe and ready, much like people being bruised yet ready for the next day. The underlying subject matter is why this piece was chosen; the picture stops it’s beauty in time and makes the viewer think beyond the piece.