“I’ve worked out of a series of ‘no’s’,” photographer Richard Avedon once said.”’No’ to exquisite light, ‘no’ to apparent compositions, ‘no’ to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these ‘no’s’ force me to the ‘yes.’ I have a white background. I have the person I’m interested in and the thing that happens between us.” With the recent death of Avedon,the entire arts community mourns the loss of an artist whose simplicity of composition was matched only by the emotional weight captured in his work. Avedon’s signature white background allowed his characters to present themselves naturally, in an environment devoid of exterior influences. His most famous portrait, that of a blank, emotionless Marilyn Monroe, is all the more poignant because it avoids all the frills that were thrust upon her during her career.
Last week, The New Yorker published Avedon’s final project, the incomplete”Democracy,” which Avedon took on in order to portray our increasingly divided country in the midst of a crucial presidential election. One of the great things about Avedon’s work is its diversity of subject matter. This carries over into”Democracy,” making photographs of both movie stars and the average American voter strike a chord in the viewer.
For”Democracy,” Avedon photographed Americans on both sides of the political spectrum. One page features two Republican delegates, both carpooling mothers from Iowa, and on another naked liberal activists protesting the Republican Convention. He also captures faces from the political realm that we are all familiar with : Bill O’Reilly, Jon Stewart, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. While the Hollywood element is present in a comically melodramatic portrait of Sean Penn, it’s hard to believe that Avedon wasn’t sick of Penn’s constant, and arguably futile, political efforts while taking the picture.
Part of what is wonderful about Avedon’s work however is that the audience is in no way influenced by his political or personal views. Flipping through the portraits, I was immediately struck by the juxtaposition of each picture to the next. James Carville was pictured opposite Bill O’Reilly, a young West Point student in full uniform across from a gay Massachusetts couple and their child. In his ability to display our culture through the key political issues of the day, Avedon allowed the divides to speak for themselves without the intervention of his own opinions. He let people’s personalities and susceptibilities shine through, thereby proving himself a true artist and chronicler of the times.
