A Good Example…

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Richard Avedon

In 1979, the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth commissioned Richard Avedon, a famous NY fashion photographer at the time, to take on a new project, to be called “In the American West”. For 5 years he traveled to various state fair rodeos, carnivals, coal mines, oil fields, slaughter houses and prisons, focusing on everyday working class subjects [pun intended]. He photographed 762 people on 17,000 sheets of 8” x 10” Tri-X Pan film. Printing the final two sets of prints took 9 months. He ended up w/ 125 final prints [about a 20% success rate].

Richard communicated with his studio manager in NYC, Ruedi Hoffmann, in broad generalities, such as “Make the face more gentle”. With this input, Ruedi marked up 16” x 20” test prints w/ a red grease pencil to indicate areas to “dodge” and “burn”. This is how we made prints in 1979!

Ruedi then printed and sent revised 16” x 20” prints to Richard via UPS. Often, it took many attempts before Richard was satisfied

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The final prints are HUGE; larger than life-size!

Here is a picture of Richard in front of one of his prints:

If you ever get a chance to see these prints, do. The last showing was in 2005 at the Amon Carter Museum [Richard died in 2004].

I included all this as a lead-in or teaser to describe his style of working with subjects.

Richard was accompanied by Laura Wilson, an accomplished photographer herself. As his assistant, she documented the entire 5-year project. Her 35mm photographs show us how Richard worked. She wrote a book about the experience of working w/ Richard and included hundreds of photographs of his process. Laura lives in Dallas. She is the mother of actors, Andrew, Owen, and Luke.

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Richard, in a cowboy hat, typically stood beside the camera and talked w/ the subject(s). In his hand is a cable release that operates the shutter. He’s talking to the subject(s) and when he gets the right expression(s), he trips the shutter.

All of the images were taken in the shade w/ a white background; very simple and stark.

When he got satisfactory 16” x 20” proofs back from NY, he always returned and showed them to the people he had photographed.

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I’m not suggesting that you try to become another Richard Avedon. I do think some of his process should be emulated.

• He loved people and was an excellent communicator w/ his photographic subjects. • He knew how to get his subjects to “act” in a way that created wonderful,

expressive moments. • He knew the moment to take the picture.

If you learn nothing more than that, I’ll be pleased.