Weston Portrait with Graflex
Toronto. One of the best known photographers in America was Edward Weston. I have a massive coffee table size book simply titled “Edward Weston: Fifty Years“. Published in 1973 by Aperture in the States, I bought my copy new a year later. Today, asking prices for the 1st edition run from around $50US used to an eye-popping $980US new.
For most of his portraits, Weston used Graflex cameras and various lenses. For close-ups and landscapes he seemed to favour view cameras.
The ad shown here came from page 75 of the October, 1946 edition of Popular Photography, and is courtesy of good friend and photographic historian, George Dunbar, who willingly shared his find with us.
NB. The post title is a riff on a popular Toronto TV series in the 1950s – Let George Do It. The TV series showed how to fix various things around the house. However, the catch phrase actually dates back to at least 1940 when George Formby was the star of a UK film of the same name as the catch phrase (I remember the movie, but I must have seen it years later as I remember seeing George Formby use an old Leica under very improbable lighting in a submarine).
