09/01/2026
"Portrait of Edward Weston. Point Lobos, CA." 1946
by Cole Weston (1919-2003}
(silver gelatin print, signed)
..Cole Weston, born on January 30, 1919 in Los Angeles, was the fourth and youngest son of famed 20th Century photographer, Edward Henry Weston. Cole received his first camera, a 4 by 5 Autograflex, from his brother Brett in 1935. Cole graduated with a degree in theater arts from the Cornish School in Seattle in 1937 and then served in the Navy during World War II as a welder and photographer. After his discharge from the Navy in 1945 Cole worked for Life Magazine. In 1946 he moved to Carmel to assist his father Edward. During this time Eastman Kodak started sending their new color film, Kodachrome, for Edward to try out. Cole took this opportunity to experiment with this new medium and eventually became one of the world’s great masters of fine art color photography.
"Well, my earliest memory is my father’s darkroom sink, up in Tropico, and my sailing little boats in his darkroom sink. Then my brother Neil and I used to break out all the windows in his darkroom, so dad would give us his glass plates. “Here, take these, dip them in lye, and clean them off.” Then he would put them in his windows again. Those are two of my earliest memories of my father and his studio. Also, I have another very strong memory. He used to have these women, I swear they were old women, but they were young women that worked for him. I remember this one. He was in the darkroom showing her something. He told me to go out and see if the red streetcar that ran from Glendale to Tropico to Los Angeles was coming. I went out and came back quickly. Here was my father holding this girl, kissing this girl. I’ll be. He didn’t live with my mother then at all. They lived apart. I was born in 1919 and my father had mistresses then. I always wondered how I was ever born. They must have gotten together just for old times or something. How was I conceived? I never remember sitting down at the dinner table with my father – never. We never had a family dinner. I have the strongest memory of my sitting at our big table in Glendale at my mother’s place. My father’s studio was a couple of miles away. My mother was a school teacher, and she was a wonderful old gal, but she didn’t cook much. She used to go to school, teach, come back, have a cigarette, which she wasn’t allowed, and go to bed. I remember one Thanksgiving or Christmas sitting down at this table with a big turkey, all by myself. I was the only one there. It was pretty lonely. We traded off a great deal with my mother and father. They were amiable, on good terms, all their lives, at least that I knew them. They were divorced so we went back and forth to my father’s and then to my mother’s."
Cole Weston.
