Re-reading Edward Weston - Feminism, Photography and Psychoanalysis - Response by Cristobal Ortega

I am disturbed and glad that I have read Roberta McGrath’s essay on Edward Weston. I have always been suspicious of Weston’s nudes, and McGrath approaches Weston from a feminist perspective that breathes indignation. I do not know Weston in person, but I am aware of his multitude of nude photographs that he intentionally curated and printed. It is in background quotes from Weston like “all she wants is sex; all her gestures are directed by sex,” paired with perspective McGrath gleans about Edward Weston and his second wife Charis Wilson that they both believe “If the face appears, the picture is inevitably a portrait and the expression of the face will dictate the viewer’s response to the body.” 

While I believe many of McGrath’s arguments, I believe that she has a few points that are difficult to validate. McGrath argues that because Weston printed on high gloss paper, that he is subscribing even further to sexualization and fetishism of his subjects. An issue of technical reproduction of what the human eye sees is something that cannot be only opted as a sexual connotation but a formalist, technical one as well. It is an issue that is not unique to photography, but also printmaking.

I refuse to believe that Weston pushed his photography into galleries and publicity without acknowledging that they would be viewed as sexual in some nature. Given the modernist discourse of the time that could ignore content, Weston still chose to photograph nudes and also photographed other still lives that still succeeded formalist, modernist qualities like his peppers. Weston was one of many, many male photographers to represent the female figure, but the part that makes me frustrated is that he took their identity away from them by covering their faces in the frame. For every woman who modeled for Weston it is arguable that these photographs are just formal studies of photographic qualities and process. The feminist argument that slams Weston entirely is problematic, because there are merits to formal study of any nude. However, the complicated crossroads of all of these influences, pictures, and relationships strike me as very sexual, voyeuristic, and formal. While I want to write off Weston as a fetishist, I cannot do so entirely.