Edward Weston

In 1906, Weston moved to California and worked as a door-to-door portrait photographer. From 1908 to 1911, he studied photography at the Illinois College of Photography and later opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. In the beginning, the works of Edward Weston were soft-focused, pictorialist in style, and painterly. However, after attending the San Francisco World Fair in 1915, he was greatly influenced to use different techniques and renew his vision in photography. Weston found great commercial success in photography in the next few years, and he also won many prizes for his works. Though Weston succeeded in his photography career, he always struggled financially. He became a member of the London Salon in 1917. Five years later in 1922, Weston met Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz. The same year, Weston’s life took a dramatic turn from soft pictures to images that were sharply focused with powerful compositions. He also burned most of the negatives that he took before 1922, showing that he only wanted to be remembered for his later works.