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To see the Thing Itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impression,–the casual noting of a superficial phase, or transitory mood. This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.
This article explores the life and works of Edward Weston, one of America's most eminent photographers, in an effort to appreciate the unconscious dynamics that determined his career choice and its vicissitudes, and to understand what prompted his many statements like the one above.
Though the psychoanalytic literature on photography (which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1990) is limited, the contributions have been significant. Fox (1957) described the analysis of a photographer who “made use of his camera to gratify voyeuristic and exhibitionistic impulses with relative impunity as well as to achieve active visual focus on the external world. Photography had become a regressive substitute for vision, and his camera served as a mechanism for the control of visual intake and for the establishment of psychic distance.” The erotization of vision was the result of his relationship with a seductive but cold mother who provided little affection while having him pose regularly as a nude model for her paintings and also sunbathe naked with her. For him photography had implications of both devouring and stealing.
Drawing on a variety of sources (a personal interest in photography,