In a state brimming with natural beauty, it’s little wonder that the photographers who have traipsed its expanses are as revered as the landscapes themselves. It’s difficult to imagine Yosemite Valley without the majestic work of Ansel Adams working its way into the visual reckoning or the coastal treasure trove of Point Lobos revealing itself without the poetic compositions of Edward Weston coming to mind. Photography and the Californian landscape are seemingly synonymous.
One of the locations that’s played host to photographers from far and wide is right here at our doorstep. From Edward Weston and the successive generations of his family to Ansel Adams and such contemporary photographers as Robert Werling and Jules Reuter, the dune system that hugs
the coast just to the west of Santa Maria has been playing muse to a succession of fine art photographers since the early 1930s, as if it were a clean slate for each and every visitor.
“It has this kind of timeless quality to it,” said Karen Sinsheimer, curator of photography at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art “When Cecil B. DeMille filmed The Ten Commandments, on the one hand we had an almost prehistoric sense of landscape. On the other, there’s something that feels so untouched, where the land meets the sea and these gorgeous dunes where the sand shifts and changes as it does in ancient deserts all over the planet. There’s something that feels so primeval and so untouched about it.”
Whether it’s the sculptural, windblown forms the dunes continuously contort themselves into or a classic nude reclining within their flowing midst, the Oceano Dunes have become known the world over through photographic scrutiny—so much so that the images that have arisen from the sands have not only inspired photographers and travelers alike to scurry for their Californian maps, but also to inevitably venture in among the rolling slopes.
“I saw images of Oceano in Edward Weston’s books,” recalled photographer Robert Werling. “And I thought, ‘What is this place, Oceano?’ Those black shadows and white sand just jumped out at me. There was this place called Oceano on the map, so I decided to go through there while traveling up to Carmel to visit Ansel Adams in the 1960s. I drove through Guadalupe, and when I saw this brown/tan sand [I] thought, ‘That can’t be the place,’ so I never stopped. I didn’t think it was the same Oceano!”
Light and shadow
Born in San Francisco in 1946 and a graduate of Santa Barbara’s Brooks Institute of Photography, Werling was quick to embrace the purist tradition of fellow California landscape photographers. And it wasn’t long before he found himself drawing on their experiences. From his association with Ansel Adams, Werling discovered the ethics and power of photographic control, while his friendship with Brett Weston imparted a desire to push that control to its extremes. But while these two photographers helped guide Werling’s practice, his vision has always remained his own.
It’s a vision that’s seen his work encapsulated in two photographic monographs: A Way of Seeing (Berman Publishing, 1997) and Beyond Light: American Landscapes (Merrell Publishers, 2005). His work also shows in the United States, Japan, and Europe, and is held at such institutions as the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The propelling force that pushed his work to such heights is his empathetic portrayal of California.
Werling did eventually stop and photograph the Oceano Dunes, and for the past 40 years, he’s been carting his large view camera across the tan mounds of sand and subjecting its ever-changing shapes and forms to the scrutiny of his lens. The degree to which the location eventually seeded itself in his photographic consideration will be readily apparent when a selection of his work from Oceano shows at the International Order of Oddfellows Hall in Arroyo Grande Nov. 1 through 22.
While it might have been the work of Edward Weston that introduced Werling to the locale, it was in the company of another contemporary that he made his first visit into the dunes. Brett Weston is the second son of Edward Weston and, like his father, not only made numerous visits to Oceano, but also made countless exposures. The junior Weston finally led Werling into the dune system.
“It was Brett who showed me how to get onto the beach with your car and then to the dunes,” Werling recalled. “I actually bought his old Volkswagen van and we met in Oceano and drove it out onto the beach and down the dunes. Brett didn’t want to photograph that day, so he took a nap, and my assistant and I walked off into the dunes with our cameras. When we came back three hours later, he was still sitting there and just looked up at us and said, ‘My God, I love your enthusiasm!’”
Werling’s work within the dunes has come to be the cornerstone of his landscape undertakings. Deep black shadows engulf the rippling folds in a way that consumes both sand and viewer alike. With hazy mountain ranges or the serene wash of the Pacific Ocean quietly lurking in the background, there’s a sense of timelessness to the work—something that reflects both the soul of the locale and part of the attraction to its suitors.
“It looked like that 10,000 years ago, and it will look like that in another 10,000 years,” Werling said. “But they’re also very elusive. It’s all light and shadow, and that’s what you’re really photographing: light. With a mountain, you have a certain formation and it never changes. The weather may change. but the formation is always there. It’s not true with the dunes. They’re always moving and changing, as are the beautiful formations, textures, and shadows. So it’s always fresh and new.”
The passion of a family
It might have been the work of Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Brett Weston that brought the Oceano Dunes to the attention of the wider public, but one of Weston’s sons was the first to use the location to make a serious photographic statement. Chandler Weston—the eldest of Edward’s four sons—enlightened his father into both the presence and possibilities that the dunes harbored.
Nobody had really done photography there before, at least not anyone whose name we know,” said Edward Weston’s great-grandson, Jason.
““Chan found it, and of course everyone went there after that—Brett and Edward and Ansel and you name it. And then of course Edward did some of those fabulous nudes of Charis there. But it was Chan who found it and thought there was so much possibility there and actually did some quite beautiful work there first.”
Around 1930, Chandler Weston first photographed in the dunes, and an image from a visit in 1931 was used on the cover of Dunes Magazine. Shortly thereafter, his father followed suit and stamped his indelible mark on the location. But not only was Edward Weston attracted by the flowing sculptural forms and eroded slip faces of the location, he also saw the possibility of it is as a backdrop for his studies of human shape and form.
It might be the setting sun and its projection of long and sweeping shadows that drive and highlight the natural formations, but Weston used the harsh mid-day sun for his nudes. In 1936—the same year he made many of his best-known landscape studies within the dunes—Weston also undertook a series of images of his future wife, Charis Wilson, within the secluded enclave. One of those images, “Nude on Sand, Oceano, 1936,” has become one of the icons of 20th Century photography.
Around the same time that Edward Weston first ventured into the Oceano Dunes, another of his sons, Brett Weston, also set forth. With one of his first images emerging in 1932, Brett subsequently made numerous trips with his camera to the dune system with one of his most significant contributions being made in 1984. His classic “Dune, Oceano, 1984” graced the cover of his quintessential 1986 monograph Brett Weston: A Personal Selection.
Oceano has also enticed others from the Weston clan to straddle its fluid peaks with their tripods and cameras. Jason Weston is the fourth generation of Westons to have photographed in the dunes, and his introduction to the location fittingly came via a family photographic expedition. Along with his great-uncle Cole (the youngest of Edward’s sons) and his father Ted (Chandler’s son), Jason spent an evening there in 1999.
“Cole and an old friend of his and my dad and I all went down to Oceano to make a photo trip of it,” Jason recalled. “We went down there and it was beautiful weather, and I was out with my 4×5 camera, which I was really grateful for. It was really close to sunset and I was shooting pretty much straight into the sun, and I used the dark slide to shade the lens and, in fact, if you look at the top of the negative, you will see it has the dark slide, so I have to crop out the very top!”
Despite having a camera handed to him at the age of 6 or 7, it wasn’t until about 15 years ago that Jason Weston really embraced his photographic calling. At that point, a 4×5 view camera entered his life and the medium’s true possibilities revealed themselves, along with the realization that he lacked a control of fine printing. His quickly unfolding mastery of the technique, however, opened a world of possibility—something that was to serve him well on that day in Oceano.
“It was a beautiful day, and there were a number of negatives that I took that day that I thought were worth printing,” he said. “The sun was setting very rapidly and I only had a short time to make the image, and I remember picking up the camera and tripod and running across the dunes and setting up the camera as quickly as I could. That’s why I made a bit of a gaff with the dark slide—because I knew the image would vanish within a couple of minutes, which, of course, it did.”
Given that the dunes have laid claim to successive generations of Westons, is there an element of each individual’s character apparent in the resulting work?
“Yes, but it isn’t always apparent,” Jason said. “I think artistic expression often reveals aspects of a person that aren’t obvious by knowing them. When I think of Brett, there is a great deal of his work that I don’t think you could predict by knowing him personally. I think producing art comes from a deep place within us that is not necessarily expressed in other aspects of life. And that’s much of what drives us to work!”
Be your own Weston
As developmental and recreational pressures increase on our state’s natural expanses, the legacy that has been carved through art serves as a reminder of the role such places serve on numerous levels in the community. Not only have these places served as a muse to those who have gone before, but they also deserve to be afforded the same opportunity to serve those yet to follow. One organization aware of both the aesthetic and environmental significance of the Oceano Dunes is the Dunes Center in Guadalupe.
The center schedules monthly dunes photography hikes, led by local photographer Jules Reuter. A black-and-white photographer in the tradition of Adams and Weston, Reuter typically starts the hikes in the late afternoon (so as to capitalize on the evening light) and leads them for about an hour and a half. The center encourages participants to bring “their camera, tripod, and Edward Weston persona.” And just as generations of photographers have discovered, there’s limitless opportunity for a photographer to discover something new.
“The conditions always create a new landscape,” said the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Sinsheimer. “The wind and shadow and time of year and the cloud formations, the landscape is forever re-creating itself anew. For every photographer, there always seems to be a new discovery. I think that’s why these places, with their shifting sands, the always-shifting light, and the shape-shifting guise, can present a new face to the land. It’s like you’re the first explorer that has ever seen it. I think that’s the seductive quality of it.”
INFOBOX: See the dunes, near the dunes
Robert Werling’s dunes photographs will show at the historic IOOF Hall at 128 Bridge St. in Arroyo Grande Nov. 1 through 22. For more information about the venue, visit southcountyhistory.org/IOOFHall.html. For more information about Werling himself, visit www.robertwerling.com.
Contact freelancer Brett Leigh Dicks through the executive editor at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 23-30, 2008.