Your best photos of the week, October 5, 2018

Editing the daily Your Shot uploads just yesterday morning, I had an extraordinary moment: I saw a photograph that reminded me exactly of Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30. The light, the form, the intimacy of the image transcended just being a pepper on a dark background, but a testament to our visual history.

Weston’s image reminded me of sitting in a darkened college auditorium. While some of my classmates were catching up on sleep, I was fascinated by the history of photography, where it all came from, what brought us to where we were as visual storytellers. I still remember learning about that image among countless others starting from Niépce, Daguerre, and Eastman to Lange, Arbus, and Bourke-White and beyond.

For generations, photography has passed down ideas to the next set of artists and storytellers. We continue to build on these ideas—and occasionally revisit them without even realizing their foundation. To me, this exchange of ideas and inspirations, making connections with our shared love of photography, is what the Your Shot photo community is all about.

I still love Weston’s Pepper No. 30.