“Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power,” a comprehensive collection of 200 images of iconic figures of the past and present spanning five decades, presents interesting ideas about who qualifies as a political figure, and what constitutes a person in power.
Each room is dedicated to a different era of Avedon’s photography, spanning the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, Reagan-era politics, and American culture up until the artist’s death in 2004.
What separates Avedon from other portraitists is his ability to capture a casual and sincere side of his subjects. At the exhibit, you will see Malcolm X, JFK, and Jackie O, alongside writers, activists, soldiers, and civilians you have never heard of before. But it doesn’t really matter who he is photographing. He uses the same technique for each picture: pale lighting, white background, black and white gelatin print. Each subject is stripped of his celebrity status and made “average.”
This humanistic approach is displayed in the 69 portraits from Rolling Stone’s portrait series depicting the “power elite” at the country’s bicentennial; this issue was titled “The Family.” At the Corcoran, all 69 black and white portraits are positioned side by side on one wall, making for potent imagery. Iconic figures include Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Ted Kennedy, and many more.
Perhaps the most surprising room of the exhibit is Avedon’s final project, a series for The New Yorker in 2004. Commissioned to capture “a sense of the country,” Avedon died suddenly on assignment in Texas. As you walk through the room of the contemporary “power elite,” you see the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, John Kerry, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But just as I was about to leave the final room of the exhibit, a flash of color caught my eye. The only color portrait in the entire exhibit was a photograph taken of Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
“Richard Avedon: Portraits in Power” will be at the Corcoran Gallery (500 Seventeenth St., NW) through January 25th, 2009. Student tickets are $10, full price tickets are $12.
The Gallery is open 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m. Thursday, and is closed on Monday and Tuesday.
