Over his 65-year career, photographer Brett Weston (American, 1911 – 1993) made hauntingly beautiful black and white images that blurred the line between representation and abstraction. Weston’s nuanced tones, imaginative framing, and keen focus on form helped him depict American landscapes intimately and attentively, alongside the genre’s most prolific makers, including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the artist’s father, Edward Weston.

This selection presents Brett Weston’s exploration of the water’s edge through scenes that are not unlike our natural surroundings on the Eastern Shore. The delineation and interplay between water and land and their contrasting visual qualities lead to rich, complex, and at times, otherworldly forms in black and white, and invite the viewer to decipher the artist’s abstractions by using their imagination.

The Museum is grateful to the Brett Weston Archive for their generous gift of 50 photographs by the artist.