Edward Weston

mounted, initialed and dated by the photographer in pencil and titled in another hand in ink on the mount, signed, titled, and dated by the photographer in pencil on the reverse, 1937 (Conger 1140)

Collection of Lynne Harrington-Bullock, daughter of photographer Wynn Bullock

This photograph is on paper with a semi-glossy surface and is in very good condition. When examined closely in raking light, an area of original retouching can be seen in the clouds to the left of center. In high raking light, some faint scuffs and fine scratches can be seen on the surface – none of these breaks the emulsion. This print is mounted to stiff slick off-white card, with a border of ½ to ¾ inch on the edges. The front of the mount is clean; the reverse shows rust-hued discoloration at the edges, not visible from the front.
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In 1937, Edward Weston was awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation to continue his work on 'an epic series of photographs of the West' (quoted by Conger, p. 30, from Weston's Guggenheim application).  Modoc Lava Beds was made during the first year of that fellowship and was selected by Weston for publication in the 1940 volume California and the West, the now-classic record of his Guggenheim travels.

Conger relates Charis Wilson's comments on Weston's Modoc series of photographs, '"During the wet week at the Lava Beds, Edward had magnificent rain clouds to work on and made his best negative of falling rain."'  Edward made this negative [for the photograph offered here], which Charis described as "colossal,"' on October 2' (quoted in Conger 1140). 

In addition to a print of this image in the Edward Weston Archive at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Conger locates prints in the following institutions: the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; a print made from the negative in the early 1940s, at the Huntington Library, San Marino; Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland; and Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts.  There is also a Project Print made by Brett Weston in the 1950s at Santa Cruz.  An early print of this image is in The Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

This image is also reproduced in Edward Weston's California Landscapes, pl. 91