How did Edward Weston’s photography change during the early 1920s?

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Edward Weston at Point Lobos, 1945, photograph by Imogen Cunningham. — Edward Weston *Edward Weston at Point Lobos, 1945*, photograph by Imogen Cunningham.

During the early 1920s, Edward Weston began to shift away from the Pictorialist style, which relied on imitating painting through manipulated images and suppressed detail. Initially, this transition was subtle; while his early 1920s work began to exhibit a new forcefulness of design and an appreciation for the flat picture plane, he did not immediately abandon the traditional subject matter favored by photographic salons.1

As the decade progressed, Weston grew impatient with the limitations of the salon milieu and sought to develop a specifically photographic aesthetic that addressed the unique qualities of the medium. This evolution was further catalyzed by his 1922 meeting with Alfred Stieglitz and his subsequent move to Mexico in 1923. In Mexico, he produced his first radically independent works, such as his heroic, frame-filling portraits and minimal studies, which marked a departure from his earlier, more conventional approach.1