Kim Weston was born in 1953 into a family of photographers. He grew up in a rural area of the Big Sur, California coastline. By the time he was six years old, he knew that he wanted to be a photographer. While he was growing up in Garrapata Canyon, he was exposed to cameras, film and of course a darkroom. As a young child, Kim thought it was normal and that everyone had a darkroom in his or her house. Being of a shy nature he loved hanging out in the darkroom. Kim’s first job was helping his father Cole Weston fix negatives, agitating the film and moving them from one side of the tank to the other. His first camera was a Rolleiflex, a medium format twin lens reflex (TLR) camera.
In Kim’s teenage years, he sailed on his father’s sailboat “Scaldis,” a fifty foot steel yacht that was harbored in the Monterey Bay. He visited many ports, from North America to Central America, through the Panama Canal to Bermuda. He also sailed along the coast of South America, visited the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii and Tahiti. Being out in the open seas helped shape Kim’s good-natured disposition and his love for life.
When Kim reached his twenty’s, his main camera was a large format 4x5 Linhof - a gift from his uncle Brett Weston. He used this camera for many years with the focus shifting from photographing rocks and trees in the traditional Weston style to Nude Figure studies. Once when he was photographing a nude on Carmel beach, it started raining so he decided to take his model indoors. He painted a set in his studio, collected sand from the beach and photographed the model in the set. This event began his lifelong series of Nudes in the studio.
In his thirties Kim switched to a large format 8x10 Calumet that was given to him by his father Cole. His studio nudes were becoming quite complex. Often telling stories of his life in each series. He would storyboard the whole series with drawings and stick figures, which represented the models. Often times he produced up to 15 photographs from one painted set series.
Kim and his wife Gina teach several fine art studio nude workshops in the USA and Europe. Including a unique 3 day Wildcat Studio Nude workshop held at the former home of his late grandfather Edward Weston on Wildcat Hill in the Carmel Highlands. Close to the rugged coast of Big Sur.
Now in his sixties, Kim is mostly working with a medium format Mamiya RB 67. He describes it as his “camera with wings” He loves the format as it can be enlarged to a perfect 16x20. He prints 8x10, 11x14 and 16x20. He still develops his own work, prints in the darkroom and does all of his finishing work himself. He has lived in his grandfather Edward Weston’s home for the past 24 years and is still “getting away with it.”
