Dunes, Oceano

Santa Monica was home to Weston from 1935 to 1937; from there he traveled to Oceano, California. In 1936 he began a series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, which are often considered some of his finest work. That same year, Weston became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for his experimental work. Weston then spent the next two years taking photographs in the West and Southwest United States with assistant and future wife Charis Wilson.. Charis, recalled, “When I first knew Edward, I used to experience a shock of non-recognition whenever I saw ‘the original’ of a Weston photograph. At Oceano I looked for those mountains of pure white sand laced with sharp patterns of intense black shadow, and found only drab tan sand-hills.”