Christel Gang, 1927

The rare print on offer here is one of only two known to exist, and the only vintage print, as of the time of this writing. The subject, Christel Gang (1892–1966), was born in Germany in 1892, and emigrated to Los Angeles in 1906 with her mother and stepfather. Young and entrepreneurial, Gang enrolled in a business course helping her to eventually form her own stenography company; it was this profession that brought her and Edward Weston together.

While on a short return back to California from Mexico in 1925, Weston met Gang at an exhibition of his photography at the Japanese Club in Los Angeles. Shortly after this meeting, Weston hired Gang to help him transcribe his daybooks. A whirlwind love affair ensued and lasted only a few days before Weston returned to Tina Modotti in Mexico. Later, after Weston returned permanently to California towards the end of 1926, the affair was rekindled for a period of several months. It was during this second, longer phase of their romantic relationship that Weston created the image on offer here during one of Gang's modelling sessions.

During this time, the pair circulated in a lively, artistic community. They shared friends including the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), the art critic and writer Sadakichi Hartmann (1869–1944), as well as filmmaker, writer and editor of the magazine Experimental Cinema, Seymour Stern (1912–1978). The physical relationship ended sometime mid-late 1927. Brief as Gang and Weston’s romantic affair may have been, extensive correspondence between the two over the course of decades reveals that their friendship and mutual admiration carried on until Weston’s death.

'March 29 [1927]. White and purple iris, pale lavendar poppies, delight my room, a birthday greeting from Cristal [sic]. She also brought me sweets of her own making, orange-peel candied in honey, and best of all an exquisite cactus, a tiny thing in a glazed mauve jar. A grey day, rain softly falling, was my birthday. This pleased me.' (Edward Weston, The Daybooks of Edward Weston, II. California, Aperture, Millerton, 1973, p. 52.)

This rare print comes originally from Gang’s personal collection, which later entered the collection of the family of the aforementioned Stern. Gang worked for Stern in Los Angeles beginning in the 1930s and eventually formed a very close friendship with him and his family. Stern’s family became heir to Gang’s papers, letters, artworks as well as to her collection of photographs, which included this print. Eventually, the National Gallery of Canada and the National Archives of Canada acquired Stern’s papers along with the photographs that had belonged to Gang, though this photograph and two others were kept by the Stern family in remembrance of their dear friend.

There is only one other known print of this image, which is unsigned and was deaccessioned from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2002.