Edward Weston (1886–1958) is one of the seminal figures of twentieth-century photography. An exponent of ‘straight photography’, Weston was committed to making photographs ‘free from technical tricks and incoherent emotionalism’ which were able to capture the essence of the subject. His series of self-portraits, nudes, landscapes and close-up still-lifes defined modernist photography in their formal elegance, simplicity and abstraction. The first photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937, Weston is among the most influential figures in the history of photography.