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Born March 24, 1886 in Highland Park, Illinois, Edward Henry Weston was a major American photographer and co-founder of Group f/64.
He began taking pictures at 16 when he received a Bull’s Eye #2 camera from his father. His first photos were of Chicago parks and his aunt’s farm. His first photograph was published in Camera and Darkroom in 1906. That same year, Weston moved to California where he sold his photographic services door to door, taking pictures of children, pets, and funerals.
In 1908, he moved back to Illinois and began his studies at the Illinois College of Photography. Completing the 12 month course in 6 months, Weston returned to California where he worked as a re-toucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio in Los Angeles. In 1909 Weston joined the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer. In that same year, he married Flora Chandler with whom he had 4 children.
In 1911 Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California where he would remain for the next 20 years. He worked in a soft-focus, pictorial style which won him numerous exhibitions and professional awards. He gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies.
....In 1936, Weston began a series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, California, which are considered to be some of his best work. That same year, he became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for his experimental work. Weston spent the next 2 years taking photographs in the West and Southwest US with assistant and future wife Charis Wilson.
In 1946, the Museum of Modern Art in New York featured a major retrospective of 300 prints of Weston’s work. In 1948, with advancing Parkinson’s disease, Weston took his last photograph. Edward Weston died on January 1, 1958 at his home, Wildcat Hill, in Carmel, CA. His ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Pebbly Beach at Point Lobos. (http://www.dailyartfixx.com/2016/03/24/edward-weston-1886-1958-2/) undefined