This

Ruth Bernhard’s “Lifesavers.” The story behind the photograph:

“I became a photographer by accident, after I came to the United States. When I arrived in 1927, I had no job, no profession, and no money. My father supported me while I learned English, but in 1929, he announced that it was time for me to have a job. An acquaintance by the name of Ralph Steiner, who worked for the magazine The Delineator, was looking for a darkroom assistant. That is where I learned to be a photographer. However, the job itself was very uninteresting. After six months I was fired. I used the ninety dollars I received as severance pay to purchase an 8 x 10 view camera, a tripod, and other darkroom equipment. With only pennies left, I purchased straws and Lifesavers at the dime store, which became the inspiration for my first two photographs”.

• “Straws” photograph
• San Francisco Chronicle obit for Ruth Bernhard
• Google image results (mostly nudes) for Ruth Bernhard
• Ruth Bernhard’s Wikipedia entry

Interestingly, Berhard wasn’t sure that you could make art with a camera until she met Edward Weston. The idea of photography as an art form was new back then, and there were few believers and fewer practitioners.

There’s a similar story about Ansel Adams. Early in his career he was using his camera to imitate pencil and charcoal drawings, using soft focus and printing on textured matte paper. It was only after seeing the work of people like Weston and Alfred Stieglitz that Adams realized photography could be a medium of art on its own terms with its own aesthetic independent of drawn art. That was when he began using small apertures for sharpness and printing on glossy stock to emphasize the sharpness and contrast – the reality – of his photographs.

And this all got started by reading an announcement of the death of Charis Wilson, ex-wife and muse of Edward Weston, may she rest in peace.