Weston, Brett (1911–1993)

US photographer, whose main subjects were the American landscape and epic natural phenomena. His published portfolios include San Francisco 1938, Japan 1970, Europe 1973, and Portraits of My Father 1976. He was the son of Edward Weston.

Weston spent his teenage years serving an apprenticeship in his father's studio in Glendale (then Tropico), California and travelling with him to Mexico in search of a photographer's paradise. He shared a studio with his father in San Francisco in 1928, Carmel in 1929 and Santa Monica in 1935. During the Depression of the 1930s he made a living as a portrait photographer and then worked as a government photographer, a movie cameraman and a truck driver before joining the US Signal Corps in World War II. He returned to photography after the war, firstly in New York and then touring the USA, which the award of a Guggenheim fellowship enabled him to do. Unlike many post-war photographers, he had no interest in politics or social ills, his images being mostly of landscapes and abstracts of nature. His work is to be found in many US museums and other collections.