This monograph is the first published collection of Edward Weston's finest portraits. It shows the artist at this most inspired: vigorously rendering "the very substance, the deeper inner image" of sons, lovers, friends and fellow artists, with such immediacy that they linger in our mind's eye long after viewing. In his lifetime, Weston's photographs were first published in Aperture in 1952. In 1958, upon Weston's death, Nancy Newhall brought his pictures together in a single landmark issue that became known as "The Flame of Recognition."