London
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In 1979, photographer Richard Avedon packed up his antiquated Deardorff digicam, jumped in a Chevy Suburban and drove throughout Texas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado, California and 15 different American states, hoping to seize an essence of the areas by means of the individuals who lived there. These have been elements of the nation Avedon, a local New Yorker, had by no means set foot in earlier than. Typically, he was extra aware of the firm of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn — topics for his quite a few fashion shoots and movie star portraits. Now Avedon was driving by means of America’s wide-open roads, visiting nation festivals, rodeos and slaughter homes, usually pulling the wagon over each time he discovered an fascinating face.
It took him 5 years, and over one thousand sittings, to finish his mission. The ensuing images sequence, “In the American West,” catalogs miners, drifters, dryland farmers, prisoners, undocumented migrants, truckers, manufacturing unit staff and meat packers in 126 freckled and mud-splattered portraits. Avedon’s ode to America’s forgotten workforce first went on view at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas in 1985. “Those images were so powerful,” mentioned photographer Constance Jaeggi, whose 2025 sequence “Escaramuza” visited lots of the identical elements of the US that Avedon did. “Especially coming from Switzerland and having a more romanticized vision of the American West… Those photos were such a contrast with that.”
Now, 4 a long time later, a novel collection of the authentic photos are on show again — this time at the Gagosian gallery in London. Curated by Avedon’s granddaughter, Caroline Avedon, who has been an archivist at The Avedon Foundation since 2021, the present marks her first solo challenge. At 26 years outdated, Avedon has got down to make the much-lauded images sequence really feel accessible to her era. “I’m technically Gen Z,” she mentioned, standing in the center of the whitewashed area. “I wanted to give younger people an opportunity to possibly connect with the subjects.”
Instead of simply spotlighting portraits that are art-world favorites, equivalent to “bee man” Ronald Fischer (which she remembers scaring her as a toddler), Avedon selected to shift emphasis onto the children, youngsters and younger adults that the photographer — who she often slips into calling “grandpa” — captured. She hopes the image of Teresa Waldron, a fresh-faced fourteen-year outdated spouse with a willful stare, or Tracey Featherston, a younger smokey-eyed motel maid from Dixon, California, for instance, would possibly bridge the hole {of professional} or geographical variations for a brand new viewers. “Human connection is found no matter what,” she mentioned.
But when Avedon’s sequence first debuted, the work was criticized by some as exploitative. Questions centered on whether or not Avedon’s use of a stark white background stripped these actual individuals of their deserved context, and flattened them into objects or characters to be consumed by the elite. “Who would not look alienated, who would not look dispossessed when asked to stand rootless against a seamless white paper?” learn an essay in the Journal of the Southern Regional Council in 1987. But supporters argue that Avedon’s type didn’t intervene with what was basically essential documentary images — and platformed a cross-section of individuals hardly ever seen. “Perhaps there was a certain reality in them that people didn’t want to be confronted with,” mentioned Jaeggi, who lives between Colorado and Texas. “I look at those portraits and I think that not much has changed.”
The financial and political overtones of the portraits really feel as relevant right this moment as ever. The late Jimmy Carter sat in the Oval Office when Avedon first started his journey out west, however only a yr into the challenge the nation had been turned on its head by a shock presidential victory from Ronald Reagan. However, as poverty worsened, it quickly turned clear that regardless whether or not it was a Democrat or Republican in the White House, the decrease working class communities of the American West would proceed to be sidelined in the nationwide dialog. Speaking at the exhibition preview, Caroline Avedon referred to as the present “incredibly important,” echoing Jaeggi in that little progress appears to have been made when it comes to how the US treats its industrial workforce. “We overlook the people behind the scenes that are keeping America going,” she mentioned.
One of the most hanging images in the present is that of B.J. Van Fleet — a cherubic nine-year-old boy holding a shotgun with unsettling ease. Caroline Avedon feels a selected affection in direction of Fleet, who she calls “one of her children” (despite the fact that right this moment the younger boy can be pushing 50). In reality, Avedon feels so deeply hooked up to her grandfather’s topics that she often tries to seek out them on the web. “A lot of the work that these people were doing was incredibly dangerous,” she mentioned. “So a lot of them have unfortunately passed.” But she is happy to report that “Fleet is alive and well,” and that she has additionally exchanged messages with the descendants of Richard Wheatcroft — a younger rancher Avedon developed a private relationship with after photographing him quite a few occasions. (Two portraits of Wheatcroft shot two years aside seem as a diptych in the second room of the exhibition).
Recently, Avedon tried to seek out Freida Kleinsasser — a younger Hutterite girl her grandfather photographed in 1983. The picture, on present in London, seems to be extra like a Steven Meisel Vogue editorial shoot as Kleinsasser stares down the lens in a chintz-patterned high-necked costume and a polka dot scarf. In the finish, all Avedon may find was an obituary of Kleinsasser’s grandmother, however she was happy to see her carrying the identical polka dot scarf. “Which I thought was so sweet,” Avedon mentioned.
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“By finding these people, I feel like I can connect to my grandfather when he was meeting them,” she continued. “I think it’s also cool to be able to walk through the show knowing, ‘Oh that guy is doing this, and this woman’s doing that.’”