Wizards and demons, saints and sinners, and angels and icons comprise the vast repertoire of Kurt Weston’s portraits. Intrigued by the mystical images found in classical literature and in scripture, Kurt focuses his eyes on the duality present in all people. 

Through his use of light and shadow and his intimate, direct connection with his subject, Kurt is able to draw out the essence of his subjects’ inner being. “Each face is a landscape of a personality; each pair of eyes, a window to the soul,” he notes.

In appropriating themes from literature and scripture, his photographs reflect ancient icons reinterpreted for the twenty-first century, oftentimes with a surprising twist. Perhaps because Kurt is dealing with one of the biggest twenty-first century maladies—living with AIDS—he draws not only on contemporary themes in his art but also on classical ones as well; for if those in ages past did not deal with the specific crises that afflict the world today, they certainly did deal with the same archetypes of woe in their centuries. The human condition is the human condition, no matter the time and place depicted in story, song, or photograph.

Kurt’s allegorical images may startle some at first, but are meant to cast a critical eye at the disquietude of the world about us, and to draw us in to contemplating a deeper meaning beyond what our eyes first tell us. Much like the iconography of the Early Church, where the focus was not on the actual image itself but rather on what that image actually represented, we are asked, when viewing Kurt’s work, to see the very essence of his subjects beyond what they are portraying in the photograph.