Beckoning ten slouchy teenagers into his living room, Kim Weston announces with a sweep of his hand, ”Don’t be shy, look around. This isn’t a museum—this is my home!” In fact, it’s both. Kim does live in this rustic little cottage in the Carmel Highlands along with his wife Gina, but he has turned the house into a monument to his grandfather Edward Weston, who built the place in 1938 and lived there while amassing a body of work that would make him one of the fathers of American photography. On this sunny February day Kim is entertaining a class of aspiring photographers from the Stevenson School. The kids have clearly been doing their homework and have no trouble recognizing on the cottage walls prints of Edward Weston’s iconic images, among them Pepper No. 30, Head Down Nude and the Shell. They are a staple of every photography textbook, but it is being here at Wildcat Hill that brings to life a man who died in 1958. A ghostly chill sweeps through the room when Kim says, rather nonchalantly, “Edward died right there, sitting in that chair, looking out the window.”

But so many mementos that Kim has preserved offer a window into the soul of a man who died before photographers were fully embraced by the art world, unlike his friend, neighbor and rival, Ansel Adams. Taped on the bookcase is an old handwritten note left by Edward: “I do not lend books to friends. I do not want to lose books—or my friends.” When Kim opens the doors to a low-slung pantry a riot of dry goods and cooking utensils are revealed. But look closer and these racks were once used by Edward to catalogue his prints. Notched into the wood are abbreviations for some of his favorite locations to photograph: PL for Point Lobos, DV for Death Valley.

Adjacent to the small kitchen with its mid-century Kelvinator appliances is the house’s most treasured spot: Edward’s darkroom, lovingly preserved by Kim with all of the old chemicals and dodging tools his grandfather used, and even the hook that held his cane as he battled the Parkison’s disease that would ultimately kill him at the age of 71. The darkroom is a testament to the simplicity of Edward’s life, and in turn his work; the window was (and still is) taped off with dark cloth, the only illumination coming from a bare light bulb that dangles from the ceiling. In little groups the students are ushered into this sanctum to look around. They whisper reverentially as if in church, which in a sense they are.

Later, the kids move to a lovely, light-filled studio that has recently been built behind the cottage and Kim leads an engaging discussion about the art and science of photography, using examples drawn from his own work, the catalogue of his father Cole (who was renowned for his use of vibrant color) and more of Edward’s images. Asked by a student for his philosophy on photography, Kim defines it as the “breaking up of space and light and shape and weight. That’s all.” Showing off a couple of his elegant nudes, Kim says, “I do not use lights. They are there to try to simulate natural light, so I just use what’s natural. Simple, right?”

It is not always easy to define what makes a photograph work; you just know it when you see it. Still, Kim offered a few handy lessons. By way of illustration, he produced a photograph Edward had taken in Point Lobos of a bleached, gnarly cypress trunk against a dark hillside. Kim took a piece of paper and obscured the bottom of the image. As he told it, one of Edward’s protégés had originally composed the photo as we were now seeing it—striking, but rather messy. Edward looked through the view-finder and then trained the camera lower. When Kim moved the paper to reveal the full, finished photo a large, perfectly round boulder was revealed at the bottom. “This picture didn’t make sense until Edward brought in the boulder,” Kim said. “It gave it balance. It gave the bottom half the weight it needed.” The students all nodded silently.

Throughout the chat Kim offered some priceless family stories. As the famous pepper print was being admired, he intoned, ”There’s still a debate as to who eventually ate the pepper after it was photographed. Edward always claimed he did, [his son] Brett said he was the one.” Considering that prints of Pepper No. 30 now fetch well into six figures, that would have to count as one of history’s most expensive snacks.

In a discussion of Head Down Nude, Kim noted that the model was Edward’s wife Charis. “They got together when he was 47 and she was 18,” he said, which seemed to make quite an impact on the assembled teenagers. “She lived down the road and used to deliver the mail. Anyway, she never liked this picture because you can see the bobby pins in her hair. He never really liked it, either, because of the shadow cutting across her right arm. Everybody else seems to like it just fine.”

Kim then offered up an example of one of Edward’s so called “heroic heads”, the striking portraits he did while living in Mexico City in the mid-1920’s. (Brett, then 14, came along as an apprentice, launching the career of a prodigy who would be celebrated for his technical precision and extreme abstractions of form.) The heroic head that Kim displayed was typical in that it was a close-up of the subject, above the neck, with the sky as the only background. Noting that Edward was only 5’2”, Kim said the dramatic angle of the picture “was basically an accident. It wasn’t an artistic decision so much as it was simple physics. He had to shoot upward because he was so short.” The Mexico pictures were part of an important evolution for Edward that began in 1922 when he visited a steel plant in Middleton, Ohio. The pictures he took there were simple and clean, with an emphasis on abstract forms and a sharper resolution of detail. The people he photographed in Mexico brought out this same realism, and it defined all of Weston’s work that followed. Beginning in 1911 in Tropico, California, Edward had been very successful doing studio portraits, and he was particularly popular with ladies of a certain age because he would take a pencil to the surface of the negative and make their wrinkles disappear, a low-tech version of the airbrushing that is all too common today. After Mexico, Weston refused to doctor images and declared so in a sign that hung in the bustling studio on Ocean Ave. in Carmel that he opened in the early ‘30’s. “He wanted the real person to come through,” says Kim.

All it takes is a drive down Highway 1 and a gregarious grandson for the real Edward to come through, too. But Kim and Gina are doing more than preserving Edward’s memory. They are also expanding the Weston legacy by encouraging the next generation of photographers through workshops, lectures and scholarships. No doubt Edward would approve, for he always viewed photography as a higher calling. Says Richard Gadd, the director of the Weston Photographic Gallery, one of Carmel’s oldest galleries, ”Whereas Ansel was a hiker and a naturalist who turned to photography almost by accident as a means to document what he was exploring, Edward wanted to be a great artist, he wanted to make great art. He wore an ascot, he played the role.”

Kim doesn’t fancy himself in quite the same way—his tastes in clothing runs toward faded jeans and work-boots, and he has the powerful build of man who spent most of his life working side jobs in construction to support his art. But he is as passionate about photography as any Weston ever has been. Kim hosts a half dozen workshops a year at Wildcat Hill and has regularly done seminars in Mexico and Scotland. Kim brings a very democratic ethos to his teaching. “A lot of these workshops you have to submit a portfolio in advance so the master can judge if you’re worthy for inclusion,” he says. “What a load of bullshit. I don’t care if you’re a beginner, all I care about is the desire to learn.”

This inclusiveness is what led to standing invitations for local high schools like Stevenson to visit Wildcat Hill, and in 2004 the Gina and Kim Weston Scholarship Fund was established. The annual competition is open to any Monterey County high school or college student with cash prizes of up to $1,000 going to the winners. “There was nothing for the local kids to aspire to,” says Kim. “Carmel, Big Sur—this is the Mecca of West Coast photography. That history is so important to the area but in a lot of ways it’s been neglected. Both Ansel and Edward have their archives in Tucson, Arizona – go figure! We just felt it was long overdue for someone to try to maintain and encourage the tradition of great photography here.”

That these efforts carry the Weston name only adds to the cachet. For taking first place in the 2008 competition Cody Edison, then a Stevenson senior, took home a cool $1,000 but the value of the recognition went way beyond the loot. Edison had first been exposed to Edward Weston’s work when he was a high school freshman on a visit to Carmel with his mother Katherine, a one-time professor at the Art Institute of Chicago. Says Cody, “We walked by the Weston Gallery and she said, Ooh, c’mon, this will be good. That was my first experience in a gallery in Carmel. I had never seen stuff like that before.”

Katherine bought her son a book of Edward Weston’s work. “He was the first photographer I got to know, the first and most important influence,” says Cody. In 2006, he left King City to transfer to Stevenson. “One of the reasons I came was to pursue photography,” he says. Stevenson has long had vibrant instruction in photography led by Cole Thompson, a friend of Kim’s and Gina’s who annually takes his students to Wildcat Hill. On the day Edison visited, ”I had goose bumps just coming up the driveway,” he says. A pep talk from Kim led him to redouble his efforts to in the scholarship competition. Edison spent two months printing the photos for his portfolio and another month matting them. “No joke, it was almost as important to me as my college applications,” he says. One of the charming aspects of the competition is that the winners’ work is shown during a reception at an established gallery in Carmel. (This year’s gala will be held May 22 at 6 p.m. at the Marjorie Evans Gallery.)  Says Edison, ”Gina called to tell me about the reception but she purposely didn’t tell me I had won. I walked into the gallery and it was like an out of body experience. I had never seen my work displayed like that. I was trying to remember my museum etiquette, but I was pretty overwhelmed.” No wonder Edison is now studying photography at Cal Arts.

It is not for nothing that by rule all photographs in the scholarship competition must be from film, not digital. Kim grew up helping “Uncle Brett” in the darkroom and remembers going to school with his fingers stained black from the Amidol. He considers making prints from film “an ancient, noble art.”

Thompson, the Stevenson instructor, says, “We’re having the debate right now if we should go to digital. Let’s face it, it’s much more cost-effective. But I want to go the other way and really embrace film and continue to teach it, and no question my thinking has been affected by Kim. The kids enjoy the physicality of the process, and certainly the resolution is superior. But if I’m honest, part of me probably wants to keep doing film because I’d be terrified to have to tell Kim we were giving up on it.”

That respect has been decades in the making, going back to when Thompson studied the work of the Weston family while he was in college. Even though he went to Carmel High with Kim’s brother Ivor, Thompson never imagining he would have such easy entre’ to the Kennedys of photography. “What Kim has done is invite the public into this very exclusive world and make it accessible,” says Thompson. “It’s an amazing gift to photography.”

For all the wonderful old history at Wildcat Hill the work of the Westons is a living, breathing thing. Kim continues to make interesting art, including painted photographs that have become hot-sellers. This protean family also has a fourth- generation photographer in Jason Weston, 48, a grandson of Chandler, the eldest of Edward’s four sons. Based in Aptos, Jason specializes in nudes and landscapes, not unlike his forebears. “I guess you could say I have embraced them as influences,” Jason says. “I never wanted to imitate anybody, but the fact is I did grow up looking at their images. It wasn’t anything conscious, but I can’t help but see through similar eyes.”

These good genes continue to get passed on. Cole’s widow Maggie owns the Weston Gallery, where one of the employees is Davika Weston, her daughter-in-law. Davika’s son Ryder is five years old. “That little boy has every toy camera there is,” says Gadd. “It’s not hard to imagine what his future holds.”

Written by: Alan Shipnuck

Artworks Magazine: Spring 2009