For Baudelaire, photography was painting’s “mortal enemy”; but eventually a truce was worked out, according to which photography was held to be painting’s liberator. Weston employed the most common formula for easing the defensiveness of painters when he wrote in 1930: “Photography has, or will eventually, negate much painting —for which the painter should be deeply grateful.” Freed by photography from the drudgery of faithful representation, painting could pursue a higher task: abstraction.