In the American West- 1979-1984

Product Information

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is… the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own. ”– Richard Avedon No one has smiled in an Avedon portrait for a long time. If there was pleasure in their lives it left them in the act of posing, or rather, confronting his lens. One sitter, de Kooning, told Harold Rosenberg that Avedon “snapped the picture. Then he asked ‘Why don’t you smile?’ So I smiled but the picture was done already….” The photograph of de Kooning and the quote appeared in Avedon’s Portraits (1976), an image-gallery of famous people in the arts and media. A disproportionate number of them look either snappish or torpid and tired… oh so tired… unto death. In 1992, Avedon became the first staff photographer in the history of The New Yorker. “I've photographed just about everyone in the world,” he said at the time. “But what I hope to do is photograph people of accomplishment, not celebrity, and help define the difference once again.” His last project for The New Yorker, which remained unfinished, was a portfolio entitled “Democracy” that included portraits of political leaders such as Karl Rove and John Kerry as well as ordinary citizens engaged in political and social activism. Death and Legacy

This is a most illuminating companion to Richard Avedon's famous monograph In the American West. It provides privileged insight into the artist's way of working based on a long personal acquaintance and professional relationship. A personal book called Nothing Personal with a text by his high school classmate James Baldwin, appeared in 1964. [10] It includes photographs documenting the civil rights movement, cultural figures and an extended collection of pictures of people in a mental asylum; together with Baldwin's searing text, it makes a striking commentary on America in 1964. American photographer Richard Avedon was best known for his work in the fashion world and for his minimalist portraits. He worked first as a photographer for the Merchant Marines, taking identification photos. He then moved to fashion, shooting for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, demanding that his models convey emotion and movement, a departure from the norm of motionless fashion photography. Early Life Oxford illustrated encyclopedia. Judge, Harry George., Toyne, Anthony. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press. 1985–1993. p.27. ISBN 0-19-869129-7. OCLC 11814265. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: others ( link) It is often said that American fashion photographer Richard Avedon captured the very souls of his subjects in his photos.

In 1974, Avedon's photographs of his terminally ill father were featured at the Museum of Modern Art, and the next year a selection of his portraits was displayed at the Marlborough Gallery. In 1977, a retrospective collection of his photographs, “Richard Avedon: Photographs 1947-1977,” was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before beginning an international tour of many of the world's most famous museums. As one of the first self-consciously artistic commercial photographers, Avedon played a large role in defining the artistic purpose and possibilities of the genre. “The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion,” he once said. “There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” He set up his working studio in 1946 and began creating images for magazines such as Life and Vogue. Shortly after, he became the chief photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. He contributed photographs to Look, Life, and Graphis, and in 1952, he was appointed the Staff Editor and photographer for Theater Arts Magazine. Richard Avedon – Emilien Bouglione, circus performer, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, July 30, 1955 Style The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC) presented two solo exhibitions during his lifetime, in 1978 and 2002. In 1980, a retrospective was organized by the University Art Museum in Berkeley. Major retrospectives were mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1994), and at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2007; which traveled to Milan, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and San Francisco, through 2009). Showing Avedon's work from his earliest, sun-splashed pictures in 1944 to portraits in 2000 that convey his fashion fatigue, the International Center of Photography in 2009 mounted the largest survey of his fashion work. [21] Also in 2009, the Corcoran Gallery of Art showed Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power, bringing together his political portraits for the first time. [22] Collections [ edit ] Laura Wilson accompanied Avedon during the six summers in which he shot his monumental portfolio of portraits of ordinary folk in America's heartland - miners, ranchers, drifters, prisoners, ... . She researched and planned the trips and was instrumental in building relationships with potential portraitees.

Avedon’s career at Harper’s was also later promoted by Lillian Bassman, a renowned painter and photographer. Richard Avedon’s photographs began to feature in the Junior Bazaar and, subsequently, in Harper’s Bazaar.Hepburn was Avedon's muse in the 1950s and 1960s, and he went so far as to say: "I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait." [45] The 2015 video game Life is Strange references Avedon several times, with side character Victoria Chase calling him "one of my heros" in response to being compared to him if the player chooses to be kind to her. Helen Whitney's 1996 American Masters documentary episode, Avedon: Darkness and Light, depicts an aging Avedon identifying In the American West as his best body of work. [13] Just the same, the western album is his most arresting book. I am thoroughly downcast by his terrible perspective on the West, but that is his right.

Avedon agreed to Wilder’s proposal. From 1979 to 1984, he traveled through 13 states and 189 towns from Texas to Idaho, conducting 752 sittings and exposing 17,000 sheets of film through his 8-by-10-inch Deardorff view camera. The image of the “Old West” was forged in the decades immediately following the Civil War, as a cadre of publishers, performers, and emerging filmmakers drew upon the legendary exploits of Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Buffalo Bill to craft romantic tales of adventure amidst a dangerous landscape replete with “savages.” But I realize now that when you look at what Avedon got in all of his pictures, it was a sternness in everybody’s face,” he said, adding “I’m very proud of this picture.”His landmark book of portraiture, “In the American West,” featured everyday Americans, but he also focused his lens on the elite, photographing icons of fashion and film, including Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Audrey Hepburn.