Cypress, Point Lobos

In 1929, Edward Weston relocated to Point Lobos on the Monterey Coast, a move that would change the course of American photography. There, amidst the rocky coastline and solitary, gnarled cypress trees, he would take some of the most iconic photographs of the American landscape over the next twenty years. He lived there with his family in a small wooden shack that served as both residence and dark room. This photograph, taken in 1929 at Point Lobos, presents a carefully framed view of cypress trees, the roots of one crossing over the other in an anthropomorphic gesture. In his daybooks in 1929, Weston wrote: “Poor abused cypress, —photographed in all their picturesqueness by tourists, ‘pictorialists,’ etched, painted, and generally vilified by every self-labelled ‘artist.’ But no one has done it — to my knowledge — as I have, and will.”