In his most ambitious project, Richard Avedon — known for his portraits of the cultural and political elite published in magazines like Vogue and Rolling Stone — turned away from the world of the beautiful, talented, and powerful to portray people whose lives most of us would probably never want to trade for our own. The exhibition In the American West has opened at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris.

 

Avedon’s photographs are not a search for superficial beauty

 

The list of people captured in Richard Avedon’s most recognizable portraits is a combination of the most famous faces from the worlds of 20th-century politics, culture, fashion, and entertainment. It’s easy to get the impression that to catch the eye of this American photographer, you had to be somebody. That impression may be accurate—if one accepts a definition of “being somebody” as far more complex than professional success alone. Avedon was interested in the distinctive individuals, in all their physiognomic and psychological diversity: both isolated from context (his black-and-white portraits are characterized by a uniform white paper backdrop and sharp lighting that reveals every detail—often unflattering) and as emblematic representations of their roles or environments.The latter category includes lesser-known, socially engaged projects, such as portraits of members of the American Nazi Party (1963), Nothing Personal—a multi-layered critique of American society at the time, published together with his former high school classmate, writer and activist James Baldwin (1964)—a series of portraits of men and women deeply embedded in the structures of state power (1976; notably, Avedon was interested in all aspects of authority—he said he enjoyed photographing politicians whose days of political glory were behind them and observing the psychological consequences of that loss), or victims of napalm during the Vietnam War (1971). In the American West, a project created between 1979 and 1984 comprising 110 photographs, complemented the image of America as a whole with a collective portrait of people who remained largely unseen in everyday life, often on the edge of the social margin. A portrait that was psychologically complex and, as the artist himself concluded, fictional.

 

Avedon shows us the people others look away from

 

Avedon once said that the two key elements of his success were an excessively heightened visual sensitivity and an obsession with work. In the project In the American West, created in collaboration with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the photographer was able to give full rein to both—on a scale unprecedented in his career. The series was produced over the course of five years, during which Avedon, along with project coordinator Laura Wilson and two assistants, traveled through 17 states, visited 189 towns and cities, and photographed 752 people (one-seventh of whom were included in the final selection). The intensity of the work did not stem from an attempt to uncover the “truth” of the American West. Avedon emphasized that the West he presented was a subjectively constructed fiction, and that the goal of a portrait is not to reflect reality as accurately as possible, but to express an opinion. And for that, the right means were necessary: people carefully selected through a painstaking casting process. The search for “faces from the street” was a return to Avedon’s photographic roots — as a young man, when he couldn’t afford to hire models, he photographed stylish, anonymous women walking through downtown New York. In In the American West, however, his gaze went in a very different direction. Homeless people, waitresses, patients in psychiatric hospitals, coal miners, oil field workers, slaughterhouse employees — the people who stood before his camera were far removed from movie stars or politicians used to public appearances. They had no calculated self-image — and no ability to perform it. But that lack wasn’t an obstacle. signature white backdrop pinned to building walls or set up outdoors, always in the shade and away from direct sunlight) was a collaboration, he always retained control.Closely observing his subjects during sessions that often lasted hours, he directed his vision by drawing out physical and psychological details. Yet he wasn’t aiming for melodrama or caricature. The realities of his subjects’ lives are told through their bodies: dirty work clothes, fatigue in their eyes, tension in their muscles, or the way they held their hands. When I look at individual portraits isolated from the series, none of them loses its expressive power — and the project as a whole, though unified by its backdrop, shows no signs of repetition. What it reveals instead is a network of connections: economic, social, familial, and professional.

 

Fiction helps speak about reality

 

Even though Avedon’s photographs don’t show the homes or workplaces of the people in front of his lens, their lives were not lived in a vacuum. The 1980s were a time when Ronald Reagan’s aggressive neoliberal policies had a direct impact on this part of the country: the society was suffering from welfare cuts, privatization, and labor market deregulation. After the oil crisis of the 1970s, many regions struggled with high unemployment, and manual laborers faced instability and a lack of protections. Paradoxically, I think most intensely about this context when looking at the only three works in the series that don’t depict people: portraits of blood-soaked. slaughtered steers and sheep. Given how deliberately Avedon used detail and considering his earlier politically engaged projects, it’s hard not to read these images as a metaphor—for those who are bleeding out in the harsh realities of American life. These photographs serve as a kind of connective tissue — they shift my gaze away from seeing the captivating portraits of Western Americans as isolated individuals and allow me to more fully grasp the reality cordoned off by the white backdrop. When the project was published in 1985, it was met with a wave of criticism—Avedon was accused of objectifying and ridiculing a segment of American society (in contrast, the exhibition includes a letter from Sandra Bennett, whose portrait appears on the cover of the In the American West book—she writes about the pride she felt in participating in the session). But it’s not surprising that the initial reception was cool. It’s much easier to consume a vision of the world presented on the glossy covers of Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. Fortunately, Avedon remained faithful to his greatest fascination — human beings—challenging the widespread division between heroes and anti-icons.

 

The exhibition In the American West is on view at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris until October 12, 2025.