structural:expansion, structural:reformatting, information:extraction, structural:summarization
Writings

Weston was a prolific writer. His Daybooks were published in two volumes totaling more than 500 pages in the first edition. This does not include the years of the journal he kept between 1915 and 1923; for reasons he never made clear he destroyed those before leaving for Mexico. He also wrote dozens of articles and commentaries, beginning in 1906 and ending in 1957. He hand-wrote or typed at least 5,000 letters to colleagues, friends, lovers, his wives and his children.

In addition, Weston kept very thorough notes on the technical and business aspects of his work. The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, which now houses most of Weston's archives, reports that it houses 75 linear feet of pages from his Daybooks, correspondence, financial records, memorabilia, and other personal documents in his possession when he died.

Among Weston's most important early writings are those that provide insights into his development of the concept of previsualization. He first spoke and wrote about the concept in 1922, at least a decade before Ansel Adams began utilizing the term, and he continued to expand upon this idea both in writing and in his teachings. Historian Beaumont Newhall noted the significance of Weston's innovation in his book The History of Photography, saying "The most important part of Edward Weston's approach was his insistence that the photographer should previsualize the final print before making the exposure."

In his Daybooks he provided an unusually detailed record of his evolution as an artist. Although he initially denied that his images reflect his own interpretations of the subject matter, by 1932 his writings revealed that he had come to accept the importance of artistic impression in his work. When combined with his photographs, his writings provide an extraordinarily vivid series of insights into his development as an artist and his impact of future generations of photographers.