Edward Weston’s 1936 photograph, Dunes Oceana, presents the abstract forms of the western landscape while simultaneously offering different interpretations of beauty and desolation found in the desert dunes. The overwhelming blackness in the centre suggests an unidentifiable void, but the subtle and striking horizontal lines apparent in the highlights of the dunes’ contours, creating fantastic and powerful diagonals, suggests form and depth. By removing a clear foreground, Weston places the viewer right on the edge of one of the great dunes, giving the viewer the impression of total immersion in the landscape.
This cabbage leaf is typical of American photographer Edward Weston’s vision, and typically beautiful. Isolated against a black background, it is a lava flow surging down a volcano. Weston worked in a manner that he believed "truthfully represented natural objects [without] trick, device or subterfuge." Weston who worked in the 20s and 30s is best known for his landscape photographs, his nudes, and a highly original series of close-up, organic forms such as shells, eggplants, and cabbages.
