Dune, Yucca, White Sands, New Mexico
c. 1940
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 26.3 × 34.3 cm (10 3/8 × 13 1/2 in.) sheet: 28 × 35.3 cm (11 × 13 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift from the Christian Keesee Collection
Accession Number
2023.156.10
Art Historical Context
In the stark, luminous expanse of White Sands, New Mexico, Brett Weston's *Dune, Yucca, White Sands, New Mexico (c. 1940) captures a yucca plant rising defiantly from undulating gypsum dunes. This silver print, measuring 26.3 × 34.3 cm, Weston's mastery of straight photography—a movement emphasizing unmanipulated clarity and form, inherited from his father, Edward Weston. Shot in the early 1940s, during Weston's travels through the American Southwest, the image transforms a fleeting natural moment into an abstract study of texture and light, where the plant's spiky silhouette contrasts sharply...