Cuernavaca
Photograph
Cuernavaca
Tronco de Palma
1925
Platinum print
Image: 24.4 × 15 cm (9 5/8 × 5 7/8 in.)
Mount: 47.3 × 35 cm (18 5/8 × 13 3/4 in.)
Matted: 50.8 × 40.6 × 0.4 cm (20 × 16 × 3/16 in.)
Museum accession
1966.0070.0051
Inscriptions mount recto-(in pencil) "74" (signed) "Edward Weston Cuernavaca 1925"
print verso-(signed) "Edward Weston Mexico 1925-"
mount verso-(in pencil) "Tronco de Palma" "20.00" "R (underlined)"
print verso-(signed) "Edward Weston Mexico 1925-"
mount verso-(in pencil) "Tronco de Palma" "20.00" "R (underlined)"
TextPhotographer Edward Weston developed a distinctive approach to photography while living in Mexico from 1923 to 1927. He concerned himself less with subject matter than with form and embraced the sharp focus and clear detail afforded by the camera. “The camera,” he wrote in his Daybooks, “should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” Here, Weston provides a detailed visual description of a single aspect of the palm, reminiscent of the smokestacks he had photographed in Ohio in 1922, offering a meditation on geometry and symmetry.