TUCSON, ARIZONA.- Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration is the first exhibition to explore the complex relationship this remarkable pair shared for over a decade. They had a profound influence on each other and on the history of photography just before and after the First World War as photography teetered back and forth between pictorialism and modernism. The exhibition features 80 photographs drawn from more than 25 collections and illuminates the often-overlooked body of work of Margrethe Mather, and Weston’s work from 1913 to 1925.
As an American photography icon, Edward Weston is widely renowned as one of the twentieth century’s most important photographers. Margrethe Mather, however, remains a little known and enigmatic figure, despite her amazing body of work and well- documented artistic collaboration with Weston. Many consider Mather to have been Weston’s mentor and teacher. She shared with him her intuitive eye for composition and her innate sense of artistic style. By example she showed him how to edit an image to its very essence. He was introduced to her circle of bohemian friends, who taught him to view life from a variety of perspectives. In turn, Weston encouraged Mather to exhibit her work and compete for recognition.
Edward Weston met Margrethe Mather in Los Angeles in 1913 and the two began a journey that brought them together as companions, lovers, and business associates. In 1921, they even worked as full-fledged artistic partners, co-signing the photographs they produced in a relationship unique in Weston’s career. Collaboratively they founded the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles in 1914 that became one of the most important camera clubs and exhibition venues in the country.
Although Weston was stimulated by Mather’s intellectual curiosity, and for a time was passionately in love with her, he was also frustrated with her lack of dependability and capricious lifestyle. When Weston departed for Mexico in 1923, he entrusted his Glendale studio to Mather’s care. By 1925, she lost interest in sustaining the business and drifted back to her old bohemian haunts on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles. She continued to take photographs sporadically until the mid-1930s when she appears to have turned her back on photography altogether.
In the early 1950s, recalling the greatest influences on his career, Edward Weston declared that Margrethe Mather was "the first important person in my life." Until recently, she has been remembered mostly through Weston’s commentary and that of William Justema, another artist friend. A smattering of information has been collected by Weston’s biographer Ben Maddow, and his daybooks editor Nancy Newhall. The exhibition sheds light on this mysterious figure who had her own very successful career apart from Weston. It firmly places Mather’s work within the milieu in which it was created-critically re-evaluating and acknowledging her place in the history of photography. Her work has always held its own in the company of great photographs. Yet, for many years, she remained one of the most forgotten photographers of the twentieth century.
Mather and Weston constantly sought out fresh visual vocabularies to set their work apart from that of their contemporaries. They were never satisfied with the formulaic or predictable approach, even though it could have brought them considerable critical acclaim and financial rewards. They were, in many ways, harmonious spirits who believed that photography was the ultimate means of expression in the modern world.
Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration was co-curated by Beth Gates Warren, former director of Sotheby’s New York Department of Photographs, and Karen Sinsheimer, Curator of Photography at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA). The exhibition was organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and made possible by the generous support of the Dana and Albert R. Broccoli Charitable Foundation.