home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=91TT2898>
- <title>
- Dec. 30, 1991: American Notes:Photography
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Dec. 30, 1991 The Search For Mary
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 25
- American Notes
- PHOTOGRAPHY
- Bonfire of The Rarities
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Most artists consider the destruction of their work a tragedy.
- Photographer Brett Weston has always considered it a necessity.
- Best known for haunting semi-abstract nature studies in the
- tradition of his famous father Edward, Weston vowed for years to
- destroy his negatives so that others could not make new prints
- from them after his death.
- </p>
- <p> On his 80th birthday last week, Weston kept his vow.
- Surrounded by friends and family, he tossed hundreds of
- negatives into the living-room fireplace of his home in Carmel,
- Calif. Art historians and photography curators were horrified.
- The Center for Creative Photography, a photographic archive in
- Tucson, even sent a representative to Weston's home in an
- unsuccessful effort to persuade him to change his mind. Weston
- insisted that he was merely limiting his legacy to work
- fashioned by his own hand.
- </p>
- <p> "Nobody can print it the way I do," Weston explained. "It
- wouldn't be my work."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-