Getty Museum

Gretchen [Flora on a swing]

Date

early July 1907

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> In 1906, at the age of twenty, Edward Weston moved from his hometown outside of Chicago to Tropico, California, where his sister, May (1877-1952), had settled with her husband, John Seaman (1877-1961). There Weston met her best friend, Flora Chandler (1879-1965), with whom he began a courtship upon taking up a job as a surveyor for the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad. Seven years his senior, she was a schoolteacher whose family owned a large plot of land in the town. Weston was already an aspiring, published photographer by this time and documented their activities together over the course of the following year. She compiled their pictures into an album, which the Getty Museum acquired in 1986 (see [86.XA.716](http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/33882/edward-weston-unknown-rincon-courtship-album-1907-ms-title-album-e-portraits-self-portraits-and-views-at-san-gabriel-river-california-with-flora-weston-and-two-women-emily-and-gretchen-american-1907/)). > > This image, which is included in that album, was made while the two were on an outing along the San Gabriel River in 1907. Weston was particularly fond of the outdoors and maintained a loose vegetarian diet his entire life. Later that year Weston left California to train for six months at the Illinois College of Photography in Chicago before settling back in Tropico and taking up work in a professional photography studio. > > Adapted from Brett Abbott. *Edward Weston*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 12. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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