Most of the day was spent reading up on Tina Modotti and Margrethe Mather.
Modotti was a model for Edward Weston, then a lover, then finally his assistant when he lived in Glendale/LA and who he travelled with to Mexico. She was an actress in the early 1910s and was part of the LA bohemian circles in that time. She was living as husband and wife with batik artist Roubaix de l'Abrie Richey (nicknamed "Robo") and started an affair with Weston. Robo died of smallpox while on a trip to Mexico and Modotti finished the exhibition he was working on at the time of his death. Two years later however she travelled back to Mexico with Weston and introduced him to that scene of people including Diego Rivera and others. Weston left Mexico and she stayed becoming involved in Mexican politics and the Mexican and International Communist Party and her photography became more political. In the 1930s she was deported from Mexico as an enemy of the state and sent to Europe where she spent the early 30s avoiding the Italian Fascist police travelling through Germany to Moscow. She left Moscow in 1936 to work in Spain for the Civil War leaving in 1939 when the Republicans fell. She returned to Mexico and lived there under an assumed name until 1942 when she died of a heart attack (though some suspected foul play). An amazing life and her photographs seem pretty solid and lovely. There are several including the hands of a puppeteer and a woman carrying a basket that are very good.
Mather was an early collaborator of Weston, and it seems likely that she was one who pushed him into the world of "straight photography" from pictorialisim. She also seemed to be aware of Arthur Wesley Dow's teachings on composition (called Notan) and may have impressed some of this on Weston. According to Imogen Cunningham, she was the teacher in the relationship. What is known for sure is that she introduced Weston to the Los Angeles bohemian scene including the aforementioned Modotti. She worked together with Weston from around 1918 to 1923 when he left for Mexico. Mather drifted away from photography as well in the 1930s but her work was very solid still life, portraiture and nude works that seem to have aged amazingly well. Her shots of Billy Justema from the 20s are fantastic and easily could have been taken today. The photo of the Japanese combs has a wonderful sense of graphic impact. The lines and shadows are so sharp that it took me a second to realize that it was a photo and not a engraving or drawing. While she was working however, she was supposedly an in demand photographer and will known throughout the US. It's likely possible to find her prints for reasonable prices. Sadly her life after she drifted away from photography was tragic. She contracted multiple sclerosis in the early 40s and died on Christmas day 1952.
I also found a wonderful artist named Henrietta Shore who was a friend of Weston, and who's paintings show bold colours and a distinct graphic style. There is a painting (or litho, not sure) of two trees that is stunning and then her portraiture work is so very good.
Beyond that I read around a bit more on Dow's Notan system of teaching composition. I think this was something that was taught to me or I learned in bits and pieces and I'm surely missing a lot of it, but it's nice to see it all down in one place, and I plan on doing a bit more reading on it soon.
http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-schindlers-and-hollywood-art.html http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-schindlers-and-westons-and-walt.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Mather http://irisveysey.com/2015/03/21/women-photographers-in-focus-margrethe-mather/ http://womenoutwest.blogspot.com/2013/12/margrethe-mather-modernist-photographer.html http://margrethemather.blogspot.com/2011/03/letters-from-william-billy-justema.html http://thebluelantern.blogspot.com/2013/09/margrethe-mather-photographer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Modotti http://womenoutwest.blogspot.com/2015/05/tina-modotti-photographer-who-lived.html