In contrast to the clinical views promoted by European
photographers associated with the New Objectivity in the late 1920s, Edward
Weston looked at nature for its poetry and metaphor. His photograph of a pepper,
twisting in the dramatic light of his studio like intertwining bodies, shows
the vegetable in all of its sensuousness. Weston once stated that the goal of
his art was to reveal “The Thing Itself . . . to photograph a rock, have
it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.” This idea of looking at
the symbolic meaning of form while taking “straight,” sharply focused images
was foundational for photographers favoring a more subjective approach in the
middle decades of the 20th century, particularly in the United States.