EDWARD WESTON | WHITE SANDS, NEW MEXICO

Collection of Dody Weston Thompson

Collection of Judith G. Hochberg and Michael P. Mattis

Sarah M. Lowe and Dody Weston Thompson, Edward Weston: Life Work (Revere, 2003), pl. 101 (this print)

In 1941, Edward Weston was commissioned by Limited Editions Club to illustrate a special printing of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. For a ten-month period beginning in May 1941, Weston and his wife Charis Wilson traveled across the United States, covering more than 25,000 miles and making more than 700 negatives. In late June he visited White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo, New Mexico, where he captured this family of yucca trees stoically rooted in the austere, desolate landscape. The extensive notations on the reverse of this print are believed to be in the hand of Dody Weston Thomson, Edward Weston’s last studio assistant and the wife of his son Brett. The list relates to procurement of film equipment for Louis Stoumen's 1956 documentary film The Naked Eye, for which Dody was a technical consultant. The Academy Award-nominated film included footage of Weston as well as images of several of his prints.