Nautilus (photograph)

"[1] In February, 1927, Weston visited the studio of local Carmel artist Henrietta Shore and noticed several paintings she had made of sea shells.

Only one of these paintings is known to still exist (as of January, 2011), and it shows a stark and solitary nautilus on a dark field, not unlike Weston's resulting photographs.

Notations he made about his exposures during this period indicate that the film he used would be rated approximately equivalent to 16 on today's ISO scale.

[4] Due to the technical limitations of the film and the camera he used, he was forced to make extremely long exposures that were easily ruined by vibrations.

"[8] One historian wrote "The nautilus shells proved a turning point in Weston’s career and marked a critical phase in his development as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, a pioneering modernist whose stunning simplicity and technical mastery are often imitated but never quite equaled.

He recorded that some of the first people to see them had intensely erotic reactions: At the same time, Weston strongly denied in his writings that he had any thought, much less intention, of recording erotic symbolism: Yet, in another entry about one of his nude images he said "I saw the repeated curves of thigh and calf, ‒ the shin bone, knee and thigh lines forming shapes not unlike great sea shells…"[12] Weston wrote that he made twenty-eights prints of this image on at least four different types of paper,[13] including a matte Kodak Azo and a semi-gloss Agfa Convira.