Richard Avedon's In The American West To Be Featured At Jeu de Paume
The Jeu de Paume presents this summer the first major retrospective of Richard Avedon’s work in France since his death in 2004. The exhibition brings together some 250 photographs spanning his entire career, including a large selection of prints from his famous In the American West series.
In 1945, Richard Avedon started working for Harper’s Bazaar, for which he soon became head photographer – a position he kept until 1966, when he moved to Vogue. His lively and passionate eye transformed fashion photography from something monotonous and stiff to something dynamic and entirely innovative for its times, by emphasizing movement and capturing his models in public spaces such as parks, nightclubs and shops. Avedon set out to recreate everyday and social situations, and to give the impression that his photographs were taken spontaneously.
Avedon also made numerous portraits, radically transforming the codes of genre, as did that other great American photographer, Irving Penn. But Avedon went even further than Penn. He shattered the iconic images of the stars of show business, literature, the arts and the political elite in the United States. His portraits show all the facets of his models’ personality, however great their mastery of the codes of representation.
Between 1979 and 1984, Avedon travelled across the western part of the United States, which was suffering from the effects of a serious economic recession. His idea was to bring outsiders and disadvantaged people into the tradition of the portrait. All the photos in the In the American West series were taken in broad daylight and outdoors, against a simple white paper backdrop hung on the side of a truck. What resulted were uncompromising images in which Avedon was able to depict the daily struggle to survive and the decline of a system of values traditionally associated with the American West.
The exhibit will run from July 1 to September 28 at Jeu de Paume in France. For more information visit www.jeudepaume.org
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