Although the glassine [negative envelope] states that this image was made in August [1939], after the second [Guggenheim] fellowship was over, Weston still included it in "California and the West," which was an account of his Guggenheim work. Looking at a fine print of this picture is a truly remarkable experience. Through extraordinary control in exposure, development, and printing--because those were the only three tools he used--he held detail in the dark areas and limited paper white to only the bow of weeds at the bottom right. He simultaneously captured the appearance of the surface of the water and objects floating on it as well as what is beneath it. In other words, he revealed objects illuminated by straight light and diffracted light at the same time and, in effect, the pictorial space seems both to recede and to rise. The clarity of the kelp is mesmerizing; it is shiny like a wet rubber hose with a black contour line accenting where it touches the water. Weston defined two spheres of reality that would be intangible and impersonal, and maybe unimportant, if he had not included a square of abraded rock and coniferous ground cover in the lower left. Because this visually overlaps a kelp, because the water and air are equally transparent and the detail is so articulated, this image requires extraordinary participation from the viewer [Amy Conger, "Edward Weston: Photographs," figure 1490].