“… last night I took A. into my arms, and found her lips were waiting mine…”^[1]

Note: Unless stated otherwise, all photographs and archival materials illustrated in this post are currently owned, or were owned in the past, by Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc. All photographs by Edward Weston © Center for Creative Photography [CCP], University of Arizona.

A SERENDIPITOUS REVEAL

Edward Weston is legendary for his numerous love affairs—some brief, others relatively enduring. Never happy in his first marriage to Flora Chandler, Weston enjoyed lengthy relationships with Margrethe Mather, Tina Modotti, Sonya Noskowiak, and Charis Wilson—arguably THE love of his life—whom he married in 1939. Weston mentions these women openly in his Daybooks, which overflow with detailed accounts of family, social, artistic and professional experiences. But the journals are also peppered with startling, deeply personal, sexually charged revelations. In a bid to discretion, Weston rarely identifies his other lovers by name, only by initial, leaving today’s readers in a state of frustrated curiosity.

One of the more intriguing of these mystery lovers is “A,” whose presence dominates Weston’s Daybooks from October to December 1928 during his sojourn in San Francisco. This youthful beauty with “chestnut eyes,”^[2] about whom Weston writes with such ardor and frequency, was clearly one of his great passions. I wondered who she might be, but harbored little hope of unravelling the nearly century-old secret. Then, through a serendipitous acquaintance made during a vacation in 2022, the enigmatic “A” was unexpectedly revealed.^[3]