Margrethe Mather, a photographer from Los Angeles, came to his studio in Glendale, California called Tropico, where Weston asked her to be his studio assistant. It didn’t take long before the two developed a passionate, lustful, relationship. Both Weston and Mather became active in the growing bohemian cultural scene in the greater Los Angeles area. She was extremely outgoing and artistic in a most flamboyant way. Her bohemian sexual values were new to Weston’s conventional thinking, but Mather excited him and presented him with a new outlook that he found enticing. Mather was beautiful, and being bisexual and having been a high-class prostitute, was delightfully worldly. Mather's uninhibited lifestyle became irresistible to Weston and her photography took him into a new and exciting art form. As Mather worked and overtly played with him, she presented a lifestyle that was in stark contrast to Weston’s conventional home life, and he soon came to see his wife Flora as a person with whom he had little in common.
