PHOTO:Richard Avedon-Nothing Personal
Richard Avedon is best known for his work in the fashion world and for his minimalist portraits. He joined the Young Men’s Hebrew Association camera club at the age of 12. He worked first as a photographer for the Merchant Marines, taking identification photos. He then moved to fashion, shooting for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, demanding that his models convey emotion and movement, a departure from the norm of motionless fashion photography.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace/MacGill GalleryArchive
The exhibition “Nothing Personal” that is on presentation at Pace Gallery presents photographs and extensive archival material drawn from Avedon’s 1964 collaboration with James Baldwin. Avedon attended DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City, where one of his classmates and closest friends was the writer James Baldwin. He and Baldwin served as co-editors of the school’s prestigious literary magazine, The Magpie, and during his senior year, in 1941, Avedon was named “Poet Laureate of New York City High Schools.” After high school, Avedon enrolled at Columbia University to study philosophy and poetry. However, he dropped out after only one year to serve in the United States Merchant Marine during WW II. As a Photographer’s Mate Second Class, his main duty was taking identification portraits of sailors. Avedon served in the Merchant Marine for two years, from 1942 to 1944. In January of 1963, Avedon photographed Baldwin for a magazine assignment and suggested that they work on a book about life in America. Baldwin readily agreed. As Baldwin said at the time “This book examines some national and contemporary phenomena in an attempt to discover why we live the way we do. We are afflicted by an ignorance of our natures vaster and more dangerous than our ignorance of life on Mars”. Corresponding frequently with Baldwin, Avedon traveled extensively in 1963 and 1964 photographing portraits for the book while Baldwin wrote the essay. They met up periodically to share and discuss their progress. The collaboration resulted in some of Avedon’s most pivotal portraiture of his middle career, juxtaposing subjects from Marilyn Monroe, Allen Ginsberg and powerful politicians to mental asylum patients, civil rights icons like Malcolm X) and the American Nazi party. Avedon’s portraits are most often unsettling and in many cases deeply disturbing. His subjects take up much of the composition, sometimes even exceeding its boundaries and thus seeming inexplicably cropped. The effect of the close-up is not only to provide details, including physical imperfections, but to also make the viewer feel as if they are intruding into the sitter’s private, personal space. The book “Nothing Personal” was originally designed by Marvin Israel and published by Atheneum in November of 1964 under the aegis of legendary editor Simon Michael Bessie. Though denounced at the time of publication, now is recognized as a masterwork whose powerful message of a confused and often compromised society seeking fleeting moments of joy, grace and occasional redemption remains equally relevant more than a half-century later.
Info: Pace/MacGill Gallery, 537 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 17/11/17-13/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com
