Sand Dune 3

Brett Weston

1937

A gelatin silver photograph in which Weston isolates wind-sculpted sand and sharp shadows to transform a desert dune into an abstract study of line, texture, and form.

Your eye is pulled across repeating ripples and carved hollows, their subtle curves and crisp contours made tactile by bright highlights and a deep diagonal shadow that slices the picture into contrasting planes.

This 1930s image exemplifies modernist photography’s turn toward formal abstraction—showing how attention to light, pattern, and scale could elevate a natural scene into a rigorous visual composition that influenced generations of photographers.

Palette

Art Terms

Gelatin silverprint (developing-out paper) Photography Abstraction Landscape Monochrome Contrast Form

Exhibitions

The Photographs of Edward Weston

1946

Sixty Photographs: A Survey of Camera Esthetics

1940

Edward Weston

1975

12 Photographers

1951