Brett Weston was destined to become a great photographer as he studied the trade under his father, the famed Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. His father once remarked that his son was "doing better work at fourteen than I did at thirty."

In 1941, Brett was drafted and assigned to a photographic unit of the Army's Signal Corps stationed in Astoria, Queens. After completing his assignments, Weston was free to explore New York City's endless visual resources. It was during this time  that he perfected his craft using a precisionist style, large-format cameras (8 x 10 and 11 x 14 view cameras), and exquisite contact printing method to capture the city life that went unnoticed in other documentarists' pictures.

The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut held an exhibition of Brett Weston's work in 1999.