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,