By Water's Light

Brett Weston's swimming pool is painted as black as a darkroom. At one end is an optically perfect window through which the 74-year-old photographer, huddled in a hot concrete room, aims his lens at the submerged figure: a nude woman, her body swathed in flickering patterns of refracted light. The world-renowned photographer clicks the shutter, and the moment is frozen.

Weston, son of master nature photographer Edward Weston, is one of the most avidly collected of modern-day photographers. He's known for abstract yet precise shots of landscapes and of natural and man-made scenery. Less known is that, for the past seven years, he has been photographing underwater nudes--and, except for the first photo overleaf, this is their first publication.