Sixty years after its publication, The Flame of Recognition continues to offer unmatched insight into the mind, life, and work of a twentieth-century icon. This classic monograph, first issued as a hardcover volume in 1965, began its life in 1958 as a monographic issue of Aperture magazine. Drawing on a decades-long collaboration between the photographer and Nancy Newhall, Aperture cofounder and Museum of Modern Art curator, The Flame of Recognition brings together a sequence of images and excerpts from Weston’s writing in an effort to channel the photographer’s creativity and, in his own words, “present clearly my feeling for life with photographic beauty . . . without subterfuge or evasion in spirit or technique.”In 2015, Aperture reissued the book on its fiftieth anniversary, and ten years later Aperture is pleased to present the sixtieth anniversary edition in an elegant paperback edition. The Flame of Recognition covers the range of Weston’s greatest works, from the portraits and nudes to the landscapes and still lifes. Accompanying and amplifying the images are Weston’s own thoughts, excerpted from his now-famed Daybooks and letters. Others who contributed to the making of the book include two of the artist’s sons, Brett and Cole, and two other Aperture cofounders, filmmaker and author Dody Weston Thompson and Ansel Adams, whose preface offers a posthumous tribute to the oeuvre of a remarkable artist. A brief bibliography as well as a chronology offer further insight into the life and work of this giant of twentieth-century photography.
