And nowhere is that better illustrated than Amon Carter Museum of American Art’s current exhibition, Richard Avedon’s West, a rare glimpse of 13 photographs from his acclaimed project “In the American West.” The genesis of “West” came about serendipitously.
“Avedon was a major fashion and celebrity photographer, but in the summer of 1978, he took a picture of a Montana ranch hand, and that image was published in Newsweek,” says former Carter associate curator of photographs Kristen Gaylord, who worked on the current show. “In the fall, he had a big show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was really taken by (the image) and reached out and said, “Do you want to do a whole project on the American West?’ That’s how the whole thing got rolling, with Avedon’s excitement going in this different direction.”
According to Dallas-based photographer Laura Wilson, her husband, a KERA-TV executive, was integral to the birth of West when he suggested that then-Carter director Mitchell Wilder approach Avedon with the concept. As Bob Wilson was working on special projects for the museum, he felt Avedon could be a good fit to do a unique series of portraits.
“The three were very bright, quick and decisive,” Laura Wilson recalls. “Avedon flew to Dallas to see the Amon Carter Museum, and he was favorably impressed. We initially thought it would be a one-year project underwritten by the museum, but when Richard Avedon hired me to work for him, and we went into the West, he realized it was a much bigger and more complicated subject, and he wanted more time. Instead of one year, he wanted five years, so it was an unprecedented amount of time underwritten by the Amon Carter for a project.”
During this period, Avedon persuaded 752 subjects to let down their guard before a white seamless background. Along the way, he entrusted Laura Wilson as a researcher to seek out the best places and faces embodying the spirit he was trying to capture. Whether he was photographing carnival workers or tunnel miners, she had the agency to approach the people he felt possessed the most compelling faces.
“We began in Sweetwater, Texas, at the rattlesnake roundup, and he said, ‘Which person would you choose?’” says Wilson. “I was surprised, but because I myself have a sharp eye and an eye that was similar to what he was interested in, I was able to make a lot of the choices.“He was looking for the faces that would express those feelings that he had about hard, laboring work." – Laura Wilson
tweet this
“He was looking for those faces that expressed what he felt about the human condition,” she adds. “He was looking for the faces that would express those feelings that he had about hard, laboring work. Strength is something that emanates from a lot of the subjects, and it’s something he responded to the heroic labors of these people on which the well-being of the entire country resided.”
Because he had to create West piecemeal between other jobs, the exhibition took six years to complete, finally wrapping up with a big show at the Carter in 1985. Avedon ultimately traveled through 17 states and 189 towns in search of faces that were, as he said, “… beautiful in a heart-rending way. Beauty that can be terrifying until you acknowledge it as part of yourself.”
As 2023 is the 100th-year celebration of Avedon’s birth, the Carter has carefully curated 13 of the original series from storage, juxtaposing the black and white images with classic sculptures and paintings among the museum’s collection galleries.
“If you’ve never seen these photographs or the exhibition, they’re a surprise hung among the Amon Carter’s paintings and sculptures,” says Wilson. “To see his portraits next to the Remingtons and Russells within the context of great American paintings, they look brilliant. He had a singular vision, and seeing the collection at the Amon Carter has brought back to me again how important this period was in my life because of working for Dick.”
The experience affected Wilson so profoundly that she published a 2003 book, Avedon at Work in the American West, from the University of Texas Press, a more extensive dive into the project for those interested in the work.
As the museum owns one of only two complete sets of the series, it makes the viewer wish these portraits were always available to see. The work may have been considered depressing upon its first viewing back in 1985. Yet, these faces of working-class Westerners feel more critical than ever, poignant and historical, while seeming fresh and contemporary in their poignancy. As the show closes on Oct. 1, one can only hope the museum will continue to rotate examples among its permanent galleries.
As for Avedon himself, he never quite got enough of the West or the people who filled it with their hopes, dreams and struggles.
Says Wilson, who remained close to Avedon until his death in 2004, “He said right at the end of his life, ‘I wish I’d been able to photograph these people forever, I wish I didn’t have to leave them.’ I don’t know that he ever felt that (the project) was over.”
