I don't like Avedon's work

DREW WILEY · Mar 5, 2025

Pentax - I doubt Avedon himself ever explained his work in that manner, as trying to reveal someone's underlying soul. That was how certain art critics tended to explain it in their pontifications. Avedon was probably chuckling to himself that he had gotten away with something.

Arthur - our local stalker was Dorothea Lange; even her own kids dreaded her when a TLR was hanging around her neck. Her best known
Great Depression work tended to be more cautious and tripod-style, but certainly not all of it. I never met her, just her second husband after she passed away - nothing to do with photography, however. I was troubleshooting an issue with their beautiful house deck, which overhangs a deep wooded ravine. A dogleg shape is built into the deck to make space for an enormous old live oak tree, the exact same one which appears in a number of her pictures taken there.

pentaxuser · Mar 5, 2025

DREW WILEY said:
Pentax - I doubt Avedon himself ever explained his work in that manner, as trying to reveal someone's underlying soul. That was how certain art critics tended to explain it in their pontifications. Avedon was probably chuckling to himself that he had gotten away with something.

Few artists ever do explain themselves. Maybe they can't or don't know how to in a way that might meet with others' expectations They are interviewed and critiqued of course and we speculate on what it is that they are doing, usually with a good deal less than a satisfactory level of knowledge of what makes them "tick"

That's OK but I'd be very worried if in a trial the judge and the rules of justice were formed by those who make their living as critics

pentaxuser

Nokton48 · Mar 5, 2025

I also like his work. And I also think I learned a lot by listening to what he was saying.

Remembering Richard Avedon - Charlie Rose

Avedon was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. We look back at his life and career.

charlierose.com

Like here

DREW WILEY · Mar 5, 2025

I really liked many of Rose's interviews, even if he was booted off TV for a good reason.

Don_ih · Mar 5, 2025

Has anyone else noticed that Richard Avedon and Annie Liebovitz appear to be the same person?

Don_ih · Mar 5, 2025

DREW WILEY said:
booted off TV for a good reason

Booted off tv and stripped of awards he was previously given, yet the outcome of the court case resulted in this statement from the people accusing him:

“On reflection, and after having the benefit of discovery, we realize that different people could interpret the conduct in different ways, and therefore we have resolved the claims,” the women said. “We do not assign any bad motive or ill intent to Charlie Rose.” (AP)

DREW WILEY · Mar 5, 2025

Yeah, sure, typical lawyer script, "resolved" in relation to big liability payouts. But this is not the place to adjudicate that kind of thing. While his show was still on the air - followed by the abrupt halt - he interviewed a number of noted photographers, and did it quite thoughtfully, although he inevitably stumbled into the same question over again several times, "What do you think about this new digital stuff" - not that he necessarily used the term "stuff"; but you get the drift. No big deal, but it wasted about five minutes of an otherwise excellent interview, in such cases. He had an uncanny ability to place himself within the psychological framework of the photographer involved, and draw out some exceptional insights, including with Avedon. I got more from that than from reading about Avedon.

Otherwise, oversized Geek Glasses seem to have been in fashion for quite awhile.

MattKing · Mar 5, 2025

Before I get out the Moderator's scythe - back on topic please!

Don_ih · Mar 5, 2025

DREW WILEY said:
oversized Geek Glasses seem to have been in fashion

It's more than the glasses. It's the hair, the mannerisms, the faces - they're the same person. When will they issue the new clone? Has it happened, yet?

MattKing · Mar 5, 2025

And I expect the similarities between Avedon's look and Liebovitz's look relate to how they see things in the world - something to do with vision.
That, or they know what @DREW WILEY thinks of them.

Alex Benjamin · Mar 5, 2025

MattKing said:
Before I get out the Moderator's scythe - back on topic please!

Since this thread was introduced as an "off-topic diversion," I didn't think there was an actual topic, but OK:

Bruce Gilden — man and work — is wayyyyy more obnoxious than Avedon.

Don_ih · Mar 5, 2025

Alex Benjamin said:
I didn't think there was an actual topic

I thought the topic was Drew's opinion?

Alex Benjamin · Mar 5, 2025

Don_ih said:
I thought the topic was Drew's opinion?

Can an opinion be a topic? I thought that was impossible. Since everybody has a right to his own opinion, how can an opinion be discussed?

I really like Avedon, by the way.

Don_ih · Mar 5, 2025

Alex Benjamin said:
Can an opinion be a topic?

Well, the topic is "I don't like Avedon's work", which appears to be Drew's opinion. The topic isn't "Avedon's work" or "Avedon's hair" (both can easily be topics and can be discussed). So we're left to discuss Drew not liking Avedon (and maybe other people not liking Avedon).

I have no problem with Avedon. His influence is widespread and completely implicit at this point.

DREW WILEY · Mar 5, 2025

What do I think of them both ... let's see. Gotta put on my own reading glasses and take a closer look at that pair of pictures. At least my glasses aren't oversized geeky ones. Or maybe "professorly" would be more appropriate, or else, "that's what I gotta wear because someone famous did, and I gotta emulate them". I remember back when younger folk were wearing thick black rim glasses because Buddy Holly did, then round thin-rim granny glasses because John Lennon did. The morning news showed a recorded incident yesterday where a couple of hooded thieves ran into an optometry studio and then ran back out with 4K worth of glasses frames, after a fist-fight with the staff. What one goes through just to look "cool", and ahem, maybe "professional", in the case of Avedon and Annie. Bug-eyed seems to be popular in certain fashionista circles nowadays too. I wonder if Matt is starting to see things red-eyed at this point? Matador capes have their own purpose.

Alex Benjamin · Mar 5, 2025

Don_ih said:
Well, the topic is "I don't like Avedon's work", which appears to be Drew's opinion. The topic isn't "Avedon's work" or "Avedon's hair" (both can easily be topics and can be discussed). So we're left to discuss Drew not liking Avedon (and maybe other people not liking Avedon).

I've seen photos by Avedon, having four books of them, so I can discuss Avedon's work.

I don't know Drew, have never met him, I can't discuss his opinion.

DREW WILEY said:
I remember back when younger folk were wearing thick black rim glasses because Buddy Holly did, then round thin-rim granny glasses because John Lennon did.

I had the round thin-rim granny glasses in the mid-70s for exactly that reason.

Today I'd probably pick something that would link me to Ringo. He was the funny one.

Don_ih · Mar 5, 2025

Alex Benjamin said:
I can discuss Avedon's work.

I don't know Drew, have never met him, I can't discuss his opinion.

That's what makes this thread of incomparable value...

MattKing · Mar 5, 2025

DREW WILEY said:
I wonder if Matt is starting to see things red-eyed at this point? Matador capes have their own purpose.

Apparently bulls don't actually respond to the colour - they respond to the lighter tone and movement.
Whereas moderators need to respond to all those things - not that some on Photrio show much evidence of "movement".
And matadors use swords - in Spain. Not scythes.

Don_ih · Mar 5, 2025

MattKing said:
And matadors use swords

It's ok. We're all in good humour, here.

DREW WILEY · Mar 5, 2025

Matt. I've been treed by bulls a number of times. Ask any cowboy if bulls can see red or not. Our road was on open range. The cattle rancher neighbor had an old bull that would get into the garden, and my mother, even in her old age, would swat it with a broom to get it out. Seemed harmless. Then, one Thanksgiving holiday, me and my new bride took a walk up the road, along with my sister's golden retriever. My wife was wearing a bright red coat. The dog started chasing a calf. The bull heard it, and then spotted my wife. Bull's aren't very intellectual. My wife asked, "What's it doing? It must be curious". "I replied, it's not curious, we better get moving". The bull charged, so we ducked into a nearby muddy culvert under the road. When we got back to the house, with my wife's new red coat all muddied up, everyone laughed. Everyone in my family has been chased by a bull sometime in their life. A rite of passage.

MattKing · Mar 5, 2025

Oh they can see red Drew. But as I understand it, it isn't the colour that matters to them - other colours would be just as likely to work.

Alex Benjamin · Mar 5, 2025

MattKing said:
And matadors use swords - in Spain. Not scythes.

Scythes unseen, in other words...

Arthurwg · Mar 6, 2025

For anyone interested in doing a deep dive into Avedon's life and work, I can recommend "Avedon: Something Personal," ed. Norma Stevens & Steven M.L. Aronson, 2017. Mostly a compilation of stories by those who knew him well and worked with him, it's full of enough rumor, dirt and intimate secrets to make your hair stand on end. Also includes a tell-all by Avedon's psychiatrist (!), which is in itself a scandal. All very fascinating.

BradS · Mar 6, 2025

I remember the giant b&w prints adorning the walls of those long hallways at SFO many years ago - back when Willie Brown was still greeting arrivals. I guess I never really made the connection to Avedon though. I thought they were advertising perfume or ridiculously overpriced, fancy women's jeans or sexualizing men's tightie-whities or something...?

I too find the idea of some hardened fashion photographer who's born, raised and lived his whole life in New York doing a project portraying "the soul" of the American west laughably absurd, at best, and sneering, mean spirited and cynical at worst..

Alex Benjamin · Mar 6, 2025

BradS said:
I too find the idea of some hardened fashion photographer who's born, raised and lived his whole life in New York doing a project portraying "the soul" of the American west laughably absurd, at best, and sneering, mean spirited and cynical at worst.

That would be true if "portraying the soul of the American West" was what he said he was attempting to do. Which, of course, he never did.

What he did say is this : "This is a fictional West. I don't think the West of these portraits is any more conclusive than the West of John Wayne."

It's mostly possible that Avedon did not know exactly what he was after when beginning this series, and that, as is often the case — Robert Frank's The Americans being a good case in point —, he figured out different paths as things went along, and as he was receiving proofs. We must remember that the project took seven years, in which Avedon did 752 sittings, exposed 17,000 sheets of film, most of which he destroyed (only 123 were left).

I don't like Avedon's work

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