Nude on the Sand

Date

1936

Creator

In 1935, he [Weston] moved to Los Angeles to take up a project funded by the Works Progress Administration, and [Charis] Wilson lived with him there. Around this time Weston began using an 8 x 10 inch view camera, which he took along when he and Wilson visited Oceano Dunes, near Pismo Beach, the largest tract of coastal dunes in California. In those days the area was isolated and lonely. It was a bright, warm day, and the photographer set up his camera to take landscape views. Wilson disrobed and playfully rolled down the face of a sand dune. Though it was not her intent, she caught Weston's attention, and he tried to capture the playful spontaneity of her physical experience. This is one of the photographs taken that day at Oceano. The placement of the figure in the landscape became a new focus for the photographer, a subject he explored in formal and textural studies, as he might a shell or any object. The Oceano Dunes series focuses on line and pattern, in this case the sinuous lines and rolling shapes created by the wind and tides on the sand. Weston's use of a large-format camera and small aperture settings produced both depth of field and maximum sharpness. The artist produced contact prints that combine a sparkling clarity of minute detail with tonal richness in the shadows. He created an image that is at once highly detailed yet very abstract. from Acton, A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame: Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, 2019)