McKeown 1

Killian McKeown

Dr. Christina Lindemen

Art 131

10 December 2010

Avedon in the American West

Avedon’s images received a hostile response in 1985, (Avedon, Richard, Jane

Livingston, Adam Gopnik, 78) twenty years later, the images is considered extraordinary. This

paper will analyze Richard Avedon’s “In the American West,” summarizing the project with a

focus on one of the many individual images while comparing and contracting the negative

reaction of the media at its opening in 1985, to its widespread acclaim today.

Avedon was more than just a famed New York fashion photographer. He often escaped from the

studio to photograph current events. He worked in the South during the civil rights movements

(1963) and in Vietnam during antiwar movement (1969-1970) (Wilson 13). In 1974, he suddenly

fell ill with inflammation of the heart. He stubbornly refused to stop working at the studio lying

in a bed with his assistance helping him shoot. Later, a second life-threatening attack of this

illness would send him to the western United States to recuperate (Wilson 13). This trip would

initiate his next big project “In the American West” (Richard Avedon, Darkness and Light). He

sensed that one of the great hidden strings of the nation came not so much from either coast but

from the country’s interior and its hard-working, uncelebrated people. (Wilson 13)

The Project

The project all started with a phone call from the Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Bob Wilson, then an advisor to the Amon Carter Museum, called Mitch Wilder, the innovative

director of the Carter Museum, to discuss an idea for doing a project about the west with Richard
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Avedon. The publicity of being the first photographer to appear on Newsweek magazine had

caught Wilson’s attention (Wilson 13). Mitch immediately called to arrange a meeting with

Avedon. The museum financially backed Richard to document the people in the Western United

States. But never had the museum commissioned an artist to create a body of work to be shown

six years in the future (Wilson 14). Richard Avedon’s, “In the American West”, is a collection of

art six years in the making (Wilson 10). From 1979 to 1984, He traveled through 13 states in 189

towns (www.cartermuseum.org). He shows Americans darker side, a side we do not care to cast

much light on. Traveling for months at a time working with a small team of assistants, Avedon

photographed the lost, the homeless, and the sad. From the rodeoers in Montana to the

rattlesnake roundups in Texas, to the oil fields in Oklahoma, he’s shows us the fear of the mental

patients, and the gore of the slaughterhouses, and hard working people of the west. (Richard

Lacayo). Recklessly and honorably he shows them to the public; agents a white background, no

props just the subject making it pop-out at you. This mark would be come his signature (Richard

Avedon, Darkness and Light). Several of his photographs were actually drawn on paper before

the pictures were taken. But still Avedon subjects are not always willing to submit to his ideas,

especially when they think themselves versatile in their own and the setting can become a battle

of wills (Richard Avedon Darkness and Light). He photographed 752 people only picking 123

of them for his exhibition (Wilson 10). Avedon makes clear that he is in control, that he will

make you beautiful or ghastly (Richard Avedon Darkness and Light). He used an 8 by 10 view

camera on a tripod (Richard Lacayo). The images shown in a human like size, 6 foot black-and-

white prints that stare back at you as if they were real and were telling you their story in person

(Richard Lacayo).
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Billy Mudd

Richard Avedon took many photos throughout the 6 years he spent shooting the

American West project, but one image captures the interest somewhat more than the others

especially in light of the subject’s story. Billy Mudd was one of the people photographed in

Avalon’s campaign. When Avedon met Billy, he was living a dangerous life hauling dynamite

and have become lonely and disconnected, away from home for long periods (Richard Avedon

Darkness and Light). One year later Billy would happen to walk by the Carter Museum and see

a 10 foot tall photo of him staring back, the portrait would break a lifetime of isolation. He

described the experience “[it was] like an out of body experience, and it terrified me because I’ve

seen myself looking at it myself in no way a mirror could ever capture me or photograph off a

little Polaroid camera because it’s small but that photo of me was blown up to where I was

looking at myself, and I thought I was dead. I actually experienced myself capturing myself and

saying, ‘change your life son’ this is the way it is” (Richard Avedon Darkness and Light). And

when you see Billy Mudds image you can feel the presence of a hard beaten man who’s lost his

way. He looks almost like a Bernini Sculpture against the seamless white. You can see a body

that’s been through hard times with scars and cuts and wrinkles, his pants covered in dirt and

grime standing with his cape also a lost soul looking to be found. Avedon’s high-speed and

motivated attitude transferred to the subjects, connecting the energy in compressing the space

between them. (Wilson, 16) Inspired by Avedon’s photo, Billy returned to his family and found

a new job (Richard Avedon Darkness and Light).

← The Photographer

Richard Avedon was born in New York City in 1923, after some high school he would

serve in the US Merchant Marines (1942-1944). He began his career as a photographer soon after
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the end of World War II. He was a young photographer in the right place at the right time when

the fashion industry was rebuilding its prewar look. He would get the opportunity to study with

Alexey Brodovich, at the Design Laboratory, new school for sales research in New York City.

Avedon’s friendship with Brodovich would jump-start him to his next career milestone when

in1945 he became a staff photographer for Harper’s Bazaar magazine (Avedon, Richard, Jane

Livingston, Adam Gopnik, 12). By 1978, Avedon had been at the top of his game and would

only be surpassed by the stars that he was photographing: The famous, the rich, and the

powerful. People like Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, and Carter (Wilson 12) also

Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Malcolm X, and the Beatles (Avedon, Richard, Jane

Livingston, Adam Gopnik, 134). In 1945 Richard met and later married the model and actress

Doe Nowell. (Avedon, Richard, Jane Livingston, Adam Gopnik, 125). He was the first fashion

photographer to directly announce himself an artist, as always people did not receive it that well

at first. But he did not get shy about it he did not say please let me. He said here I will have my

way, in that attitude made him what he is (Richard Avedon Darkness and Light).

The 1985 Exhibition

When the book “In the American West” was released, the American public had a puzzled

negative response. Where were the lush pristine landscapes of Carleton Watkins or Ansel

Adams? (Wilson, 121). People wanted to know why an east coast city photographer was tracking

himself through the west capturing images of working-class people. Some even wondered if

these images were really taken in the western United States (Richard Avedon, Darkness and

Light). Avedon and his team of photographers set out to document, or at least to invoke the lives

of the working class people in American West (Avedon, Richard, Jane Livingston, Adam

Gopnik, 78). When Avedon brought his project to a finish in 1985, and was ready to present it to
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the public, not a single museum in Munich, New York would accept it. “Avedon’s West is not

the West as we know it” declared John Szarkowski, curator of photography for the Museum of

Modern Art (Wilson 121). Many critics would follow suit. Fred McDarrah of the Photo District

News writes, “There is something extremely cruel, even vigorous, about posing a spastic mental

patient, a crippled farmer, a one armed knife stabbed prisoner, a pathetic alcoholic derelict, all

for the sake of producing sensational portraits… this is a sick collection that expresses Avedon’s

inner fears and terrifying nightmares” (Avedon, Richard, Jane Livingston, Adam Gopnik, 78).

Another statement from one Joseph E. Young, writer of Scottsville Progress in Arizona, puts his

feelings into a letter openly sent to Avedon himself, “Apparently, you have had a great deal of

fun slumping in the West and taking advantage of your carefully selected freaks, attempting

thereby to rob them of their dignity and by extension to ridicule the West. That you have been so

handsomely supported in such a critical, pernicious endeavor is in itself a monument to the moral

and cultural decline of our nation” (Avedon, Richard, Jane Livingston, Adam Gopnik, 78).

Richard knew how to play his cards right, he understood better than most critics and he cleverly

titled his book “In the American West” not “The American West”.

The 2005 Exhibition

“I think my best work, as a body of work was the American West, I get the question photos

when I was about 60 years old, and its different than being 50, and being 40, you start to feel

your own mortality, I think my aging is on the last steps into the last big chapters where beat into

them was this work as a deep concentration to the people who were strangers because of my

connection at that time,” said Avedon (Richard Avedon, Darkness and Light). In 1985, the Carter

Museum presented in the American West Controversial and graphically striking, the portraits in

the exhibition granted extensive and bad times hated discussion about the nature of portraiture,
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photography and the true identity of the American West. (www.cartermuseum.org) in 2005,

“now seen in a new light the extraordinary images have become justifiably famous,” said Amon

Carter Museum director Rick Stewart. On September 17, 2005, the Carter Museum would again

present the works from in the American West to mark its 20th anniversary of the original

exhibition. A large portion of the project had not been seen in the United States since its initial

tour. Seventy-eight of the original 124 portraits would be on view in this exhibition including the

best-known images. (www.cartermuseum.org) “These large photographs are as vivid, compelling

and challenging today as they were 20 years ago”, said Rohrbach, “One cannot walk away from

this show unmoved.” Richard would die on October 1, 2004, and Rohrbach who had been

working with Richard in early 2003, would continue to work with Richard Avedon foundation to

ensure that the photographer’s initial vision was completed (www.cartermuseum.org). Between

1985, and today Richard’s photos exist not in the dark dank basement of a museum storage

room, but in some of the biggest and most famous museums in the United States, like the

Smithsonian Institution, in Washington DC, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City,

University of Art Museum, Berkeley, Franklin Gallery in San Francisco and of course the Amon

Carter Museum in Fort Worth Texas as well as many, more scattered across the country

(www.RichardAvedon.com). The anger and hostility that started in 1985, has washed away and

now we can see the meaning of his photos. We can see the darkness and light and appreciate it.

As Avedon said, "The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no

longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All

photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth" (Andy Grundberg).

Conclusion
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“I think I do photograph what I’m afraid of. I think I have photographed what I’m afraid of

things I couldn’t have deal with without the camera my father’s death, madness, when I was

young women, I didn’t understand, it gave me sorts of control over the situation and by

photographing what I was afraid of, what I was interested in I explored and learned and laid

the ghost it got out of my system onto the page”, said Richard Avedon (Richard Avedon

Darkness and Light). Richard Avedon became a master of his own fear and reflected it back

onto the printed page and towards us. He showed us the true side a part of this country that at

first hurt to see an even more to acknowledge, From the beginning Avedon warned Wilder that

he was not going to glorify the West, I can’t guarantee what I’ll find”, said Avedon (Wilson 14).

He looked for inspiration everywhere. Work has become a source of energy, to the point of

exhaustion (Wilson, 122). The men pursued his vision was willing to do anything to capture it.

but along the way he shook the sandbox and made it what it is today.
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Works Cited

Wilson, Laura. Avedon at Work in the American West. Italy: EBS, 2003. Print.

Avedon, Richard, Jane Livingston, Adam Gopnik. Evidence 1944-1994 Richard Avedon. New

York: Random House, 1994. Print.

Lacayo, Richard. “Into the Land of Our Dreams.” Time 16 Dec. 1985: 70-74. Print.

“Richard Avedon Darkness and Light”. Dir. Helen Whitney. Thirteen/WNET. 1995. Film.

“In the American West: Photographs by Richard Avedon Opens at Fort Worth’s Amon Carter

Museum 20 Years After 1985 Exhibition” www.cartermuseum.org, NP, Release date: March 3,

2005

Grundberg, Andy. www.nytimes.com, “Richard Avedon, the Eye of Fashion, Dies at 81”

Published: October 2, 2004