Located at the front of the Colegio El Pacifico which overlooks, Mazatlan's bay along Olas Altos, the plaque with the following quote is from American photographer Edward Weston. Unfortunately the plaque (and an internet search does not reveal the source of the quote.)
The plaque reads:
" "Y aparecio una maravillosa nube
blanca, estaba bellamente iluminada
y se levantaba desde la bahia como
una gigantesca torre blanca. Esa fue
mi transformacion del mero registro
a fotos con intencion. Esta sera una
de mis mejores y mas significativas
fotografias.
Edward Weston, Agosto 1923
Sociedad Historica Mazatleca, Noviembre del 2005"
which means:
"And there appeared a wonderful white cloud,
which was beautifully lit
and rose from the bay as
a giant white tower. That was
my transformation from merely intending to
registrater photos. This will be one
of my best and most significant
photographs.
Edward Weston, August 1923
Mazatleca Historical Society, November 2005 "
Wikipedia (
visit link) article on Weston does not specifically mention Mazatlan...but it does inform us about his working in Mexico 1923-1927.
It also tells us that:
"...Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was a 20th century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his forty-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography" because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.
Weston was born in Chicago and moved to California when he was 21. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however, he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images.
In 1947 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and he stopped photographing soon thereafter. He spent the remaining ten years of his life overseeing the printing of more than 1,000 of his most famous images."