Artful Lives: Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather, and the Bohemians of Los Angeles 1

by Beth Gates Warren
2011, Getty Publications
Hardcover, 392 pages
87 b/w illustrations
$39.95

Bet you didn’t know that one of the world’s most iconic fine art photographers, Edward Weston (1886-1958), launched his career and found his ground-breaking creative vision in a tiny studio on the northwest corner of Brand and Los Feliz Boulevards. Weston and his muse/mistress Margrethe Mather worked, played, and loved there from approximately 1913 to 1923. The “Little Studio”, as it was aptly named, was also a locus for the flourishing community of free-thinking, progressive bohemian characters who inhabited Los Angeles as the world was up-shifting into the Modern Era.

All this doesn’t sound like Glendale, does it? Well, It was called “Tropico” back then – a bucolic little town straddling what is now south Glendale and parts of Atwater Village.

Author and historian Beth Gates Warren has written a fascinating book about the lives and times of Weston and Mather, entitled Artful Lives: Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather and the Bohemians of Los Angeles. Reading this book is like getting in a time machine – traveling back in time, but staying in the same space.

Beth will be speaking about her book, reading selected passages, and showing us some fascinating photographs, at the Glendale Public Library on Thursday, June 14 at 7 pm. Afterwards, books will be available for sale and there will be a book signing. You don’t want to miss this one!

Thank you to guest reviewer Arlene Vidor, president of the Associates of Brand Library. The Associates are sponsoring the June 14 author event along with The Glendale Historical Society, The Friends of Atwater Village, and the Friends of the Glendale Public Library.