Growing up Weston: Why I Finally Wrote the Book
Kim Weston at his spotting desk @Magdalena
I'm often asked, why did you decide to write a book and why now? The short answer is I didn't make anyone take me seriously until I was at least seventy, and I wanted enough—excuse me—content to make it an interesting read as well as a show of my body of work from the past fifty years of photographing.
First, one has to understand what makes me do what I do in my art form. To understand that, you have to see the difference between an artist and a photographer. Photographers spend most of their time outside or refining one's craft, looking for things to photograph, so it's a constant search for something they have very little control over. One is always shackled by location, weather, light. And to me, the most creative part is how one takes all these variables and composes something unique to themselves, all while having no control over the light and atmosphere. Yes, they have the power of composition, but very little else.
One of the most powerful tools, of course, is the craft—how to express the scene on their film and how they will translate what they have just captured into a final print in the darkroom. For all you digital people, the process is the same. Your means to the end product is just done digitally and with a computer. It's still a craft and must be learned and mastered. So, if you conduct yourself in this manner, you are a photographer. You photograph things. Doesn't matter if you use the film approach or the digital. Your creative gene is your choice of subject, composition, and your craft ability—excuse me—either in digital form or analog.
Some of the greatest photographers in history have used these same three things: subject, composition, craft. My grandfather and his great friend Ansel Adams, just to name a few, are these types of photographers. So, I asked Siri, "What is an artist?" And she replied, "A professional—a practicing artist selling their art in galleries, devoting their time to teaching, blah blah blah." I guess that sums it up. It just goes to show why I wrote this book.
I don't think I ever wanted to be a photographer. I wanted to be an artist—no serious definition, but—I wanted to use all my learning about the craft from my father and my uncle Brett and make something important. Important to me. I think it is a good time to stop. Have to prepare for a friend who's a great photographer, who's coming over, and she's going to teach me how to make spritzers (spaetzle). Probably didn't pronounce that right. But anyway, it's a good time to stop, and in my next post, I'll talk about something different. But in the same vein.
