One the 20th century’s most influential photographers, Edward Weston was among the pioneers of a modernist style characterized by sharply focused and sensuously detailed black and white images. Using large format cameras and available light, Weston transformed the natural landscape, and forms such as peppers, shells, rocks and nudes, into richly toned sculptural objects, poetic in their simplicity. Born in Chicago, Edward Weston operated his own portrait studio in Tropico, California in 1911, working in the soft- focused Pictorialist style. In 1922, after photographing the ARMCO Steel Plant in Middletown, Ohio, Weston decided to renounce the Pictorialist style. Then following year he moved to Mexico City with Tina Modotti, he became friendly with the artist community including Diego Riveria, David Siquerios and Gabriel Orozco, whom encouraged his new direction. Weston returned to California in 1926 and began work on the natural-form close-ups, nudes and portraits for which he is most well known. In 1932, Weston was a founding member of the f/64 group of purist photographers, and in 1937 he became the first recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Photography. Weston’s accomplishments have been widely recognized, including major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1946, and the Smithsonian Institution in 1956, as well as numerous others.