Edward Weston (1886-1958) Nude (Charis, Santa Monica), 1936. Silver print, printed by Cole Weston (c. 1970), mounted on card, signed, titled and dated by Cole Weston in pencil with negative number "227N" on verso of mount with stamp "Negative by - Edward Weston" and "Print by [Cole Weston]". 24.2 x 19 cm Bibliography: - Nancy Newhall, Edward Weston, Photographer, New York, Grossman, 1965, pg. 60. - Charis Wilson, Edward Weston Nudes, Aperture, 1977, p. 82. - Amy Conger, Edward Weston: Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography, 1992, fig. 968. - Matthieu Humery, 100 Masterpieces of Photography. Collection Pinault, Dilecta, 2024, cover. Why do certain images become prescriptive icons, reproduced over and over again, inspiring generations of artists? While the answer often lies in the intertwining of partly elusive socio-cultural and media issues, it is sometimes more obvious, given that the work in question marks the formal culmination of a founding creative path. Such is the case with Edward Weston's photograph of his second wife, Charis Wilson, seated on the ground on the balcony of their home in Santa Monica, California. From the obsessive study of nautiluses to the carnal abstractions of Miriam Lerner, from the striking foreshortening of Tina Modotti's nudes to the theorization of the f/64 movement, the photographer's modern quest for optical purity is fully expressed in this image. Crossed and bent legs, flattened perspective, geometric hairstyle as face: the plastic qualities of the anonymized body are in fact an opportunity to assert the medium's own physical specificities. In 1970, at the first Rencontres photographiques, and under the direction of Lucien Clergue, 36 Edward Weston prints were exhibited. In retrospect, Clergue's aim was to present the work of this major photographer, little-known in France, while at the same time asserting the decisive influence of Weston's work on his own. Proof of his continuing admiration, in 1989 - 30 years after Edward Weston's death - he interviewed Charis Wilson at her home in Santa Cruz. In 2019, for the 50th edition of the festival, Sam Stourdzé - then director of the event - confronts the prints of both men from the historical selection. Whether nudes or still lifes, we can clearly discern the echo of Edward Weston's aesthetic and intellectual research in those of Lucien Clergue, who seized upon them to elaborate his own photographic language (the use of the term language has rarely been so apt).The presence of this print in his collection is to be seen as a sensitive and complex expression of what it means for an artist to possess the work of one of his models.