I noticed something odd about Richard Avedon's photography

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Photographers and artists have been capturing images of faces for, [music] well, for a very long time. And in the world of portraits, anything goes. Rich and poor, old and young, powerful and disenfranchised. But the truth [music] is, not all portraits are created equal.

[00:00:17]And this was made clear to me recently while visiting Richard Avedon Immortal at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which featured almost 100 portraits by Richard Avedon taken between 1951 and 2004. The exhibition presents of many celebrities, politicians, and artists aging. What I saw there was not only a stunning show of portraits that challenged visitors relationship with aging, but also through one extremely clever and subtle curatorial choice, challenges our relationship to social class and photography itself. Avedon was an extremely famous and prodigious fashion photographer, not only taking pictures for Harper's Bazaar, Life Magazine, Vogue, Rolling Stone, but he was also the first staff photographer of The New Yorker. So, as you can imagine, when he took pictures of older people, it wasn't because they were models. The fashion industry having heavily restricted standards, especially for women, one of which is being young.

[00:01:13]At Richard Avedon Immortal, you can find portraits of artists such as Francis Bacon, Patti Smith, Willem de Kooning, or Toni Morrison. You can also find portraits of the powerful, former senators Mike Mansfield and Eugene McCarthy, former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, or even Ronald Reagan. We'll get back to him in a second, don't worry.

[00:01:37]Almost all of these portraits are captured in Avedon's famous formula. A subject against a white background stands in the middle of a vertical rectangle framed by large-format photography black borders. Because they're shot in black and white, and especially because of their white backgrounds, these pictures focus and emphasize the shape and texture of the subject, extracting it from its environment [music] or any context and centering all the attention on the human figure presented to us. When displayed next to each other, these put every subject on an equal footing. You can compare the playwright Samuel Beckett with Rose F. Kennedy or author William Borrows with the governor of Alabama, George Wallace. In this equalizing framework, aging becomes even more relevant as it is inevitable, no matter your influence, wealth, or power. If you know me, you know I have little affection for those in power, for these congressmen and senators and first ladies and for Ronald Reagan, especially not for Ronald Reagan. And if you don't know me, hi, I'm Sean. I make videos on YouTube. I've been collaborating with the CBC. I make videos on art history. I make video essays usually from a political perspective. So, go check it out if you're interested. Anyway, I don't want to look at rich, powerful people growing old and happy. That's just not the type of art that inspires me, which brings us to one of Avedon's most unique and thought-provoking projects, one which, to understand why I loved Avedon's exhibition so much, we need to look at.

[00:03:02]This project is his famous In the American West.

[00:03:06]In 1979, the Amon Carter Museum commissioned Avedon [music] to make a project on the American West. Five years later, after traveling to 189 [music] towns in 17 states and even in Canada, he had produced 17,000 sheets of large format film. On this film, he had captured portraits in the same style he habitually used for models, celebrities, and the powerful, but this time, his subjects were the disenfranchised, the working class, miners, prisoners, housewives, unidentified migrants, farmers, drifters, >> [music] >> mental hospital patients, children, and carnies.

[00:03:40]Not our prime minister, but people who worked in carnivals. These are fascinating portraits and although I love some working class representation, these are not exempt from criticism.

[00:03:51]Many have wondered if this representation isn't folkloric or a bit mythologizing instead of being sensitive and accurate. As critic Louis Todd scathingly wrote in The Atlantic, "The subjects of Avedon's Western portraits are ultimately [music] like his fashion subjects. If they tell a story, it is only Avedon's story. What he has created with his Western pictures is an unconvincing fiction devoid of any real feeling." Avedon doesn't claim to represent the American West accurately.

[00:04:21]>> I made up a fictional picture, that a man covered with bees would be a good metaphor for the human condition. He was highly selective of his subjects, taking the most visually striking, of course, such as this beekeeper, who was one of many [music] beekeepers Avedon skimmed through, or this man with scoliosis, or Alfred Lester, who's missing an arm.

[00:04:43]These characters are certainly interesting, but they're not accurately depicting the people of the West, but there's a way in which fiction, stories, can shape narratives and the way we see and think about a certain territory and the people inhabiting it. These works of fiction can be granted authority when presented scientifically, which some may argue is what Avedon's doing.

[00:05:07]Added to the captions under the subjects, which confirm almost anthropological study of the subjects on display, one critic, as cited by scholar Samantha Krukowski, wrote, "Torn from their natural context, his subjects become like specimens examined by a visiting scientist. [music] The blank background emphasizes the sense of alienation. They seem so remote, so objectified, that the result is emotionally chilling." As Krukowski wrote herself, "By removing his subjects from their contexts, Avedon created a set of Western specimens. They look as if they are in a petri dish while we look through the microscope." Through the almost 100 portraits in this exhibition, which again, were mostly of rich, [music] powerful, and influential people, I noticed three of the oppressed. One of William Casby, born in slavery, and two farmers, Daniel Salazar and Alfred Lester. The two farmers come from his project in the American West.

[00:06:03][music] When I told you earlier that all these portraits by their similar styles were comparable, I didn't mention that they [music] had sometimes different sizes. Some portraits have a more imposing presence than others. And what caught my eye, my attention, what inspired this video, was these three portraits tucked in a corner. You see Daniel Salazar, Alfred Lester, and Ronald Reagan, all next to each other.

[00:06:28]And while they could be equal, they're not. The farmers, Salazar and Lester, are larger than Reagan. This choice to display these three specific portraits in this way is a statement which not only characterizes the exhibition, but also characterizes Avedon's career. As I walked among the dozens of portraits at the Museum of Fine Arts of Montreal, I came to believe that Avedon's portraits of Salazar and Lester, among all the famous and powerful, relativizes his work in the American West. It does so because, though these two farmers are parts of a fictional narrative, a fantasy, [music] so are the pictures of Reagan, Wallace, or Kennedy. Our perception of the grandeur of these people, of their power, is one whose importance is socially constructed in a context where individuality is central to our conception of power. They are important because we give them importance. They are powerful because we give them our power. Avedon's portrait of Reagan illustrates an already established narrative, [music] while his portrait of Lester is a narrative he's establishing. Both are constructed narratives. And if In the American West is a fantasy of Avedon's mind which ought to be criticized and re-examined, perhaps the narratives which give so much power to the politicians and celebrities Avedon photographed are fantasies of our own.

[00:07:50]It only matters that in some way I relate to them and I feel connected to them Mhm. and that there is an exchange [music] of energy between myself and the sitter and it's when those two energies meet that the photograph is taken.