Personal+Life

__**Personal Life **__ "Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it may be" - //Edward Weston// Weston became one of the founding members of Group f/64 in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham and Sonya Noskowiak. The group chose this optical term because they habitually set their lenses to that aperture to secure maximum image sharpness of both foreground and distance.

Weston married his first wife, Flora Chandler in 1909. He had four children with Flora; Edward Chandler in 1910, Theodore Brett in 1911, Laurence Neil in 1916 and Cole in 1919. In 1911, Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. This would be his base of operation for the next two decades.

In 1912, Weston met photographer Margrethe Mather in his Tropico studio. Mather became his studio assistant and most frequent model for the next decade. Mather had a very strong influence on Weston. He would later call her, “the first important woman in my life.”

Weston traveled to New York City in 1922, where he met other photographers and artists Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler and Georgia O’Keeffe, who also became important influences in his life.

In 1923 Weston moved to Mexico City where he opened a photographic studio with his apprentice and lover Tina Modotti. Many important portraits and nudes were taken during his time in Mexico. He then moved back to California in 1926, to continue working with his Tropico studio. He then moved to Carmel, California in 1929, and shot the first of many photographs of rocks and trees at Point Lobos, California.

Weston began keeping journals in 1915 that came to be known as his "Daybooks." They would chronicle his life and photographic development into the 1930’s. By Stephanie Jodoin