spring 1906
Moves to Tropico at his sister’s urging
At his sister’s urging he leaves Chicago in the spring of 1906 and settles near May’s home in Tropico, California (now a neighborhood of Glendale); he decides to stay and pursue a career in photography but soon realizes he needs more professional training.
1906 · Virkested
California
1906
First publication: “Spring, Chicago”
After his sister’s family moves to California in 1904, he is left isolated in Chicago, works in a department store and spends most of his free time photographing; within two years he feels confident enough to submit his work to the magazine Camera and Darkroom, and its April 1906 issue carries a full-page reproduction of his picture Spring, Chicago, the first known publication of any of his photographs.
1907–1908
Illinois College of Photography: a course without a diploma
A year later he goes to Effingham, Illinois, to enroll in the Illinois College of Photography, finishing the nine-month course in six months. The school refuses him a diploma unless he pays for the full nine months; Weston refuses and moves back to California in the spring of 1908.
1908
The studios of George Steckel and Louis Mojonier
He briefly works as a negative retoucher at George Steckel’s photography studio in Los Angeles and within a few months moves to the more established studio of Louis Mojonier, where for the next several years he learns the techniques and business of running a studio under Mojonier’s direction.
30 January 1909
Marries Flora May Chandler
Flora May Chandler, his sister’s best friend, a graduate of the Normal School that later became UCLA, teaches grade school in Tropico; she is seven years older than Weston and a distant relative of Harry Chandler, head of what was described as the most powerful family in Southern California, a fact that did not go unnoticed by Weston and his biographers. They marry in a simple ceremony.