Edward Weston Portraits is the first published collection of Edward Weston's most revealing portraits and shows the artist at his most inspired: "rendering the very substance, the deeper inner image" of sons, lovers, friends, and fellow artists with such commanding immediacy that they linger in the mind's eye long after viewing.

Weston seized the photographic moment through a shrewd and unusual technique: by only pretending to shoot film for a period of time before actually taking the photograph, and then flashing the lens cap without the subjects' knowing, he cleverly guided them beyond "the pose," even allowing his sitters to wander freely about the studio.

From the smoldering intensity on the face of Mexican painter Jose Clemete Orozco to the beguilingly sensual elegance achieved in nude depictions of Charis Wilson - Weston's greatest sitter and most enduring love - the photographer again and again transformed the realistic into the immanently mystical.

Encompassing 72 duotone prints, Edward Weston Portraits treats its subject with the care and respect that Weston did his: on equal terms. A foreword by Cole Weston and a biographical essay by Susan Morgan, correspondence from Weston's lifelong friends, and excerpted texts from his daybooks all enhance and deepen our understanding of the photographs. A new window on Edward Weston's supreme talent, a documentary glimpse of his extraordinary circle of acquaintances, and a paradigm of photographic portaiture.

Edward Weston Portraits evinces what Robinson Jeffers called "unmeasured power, incredible passion, enormous craft."