Avedon photo exhibit worth a thousand words

By Edward Gunts

September 14, 2008

What does power look like?

What does it do to people?

How can you tell who has it and who doesn't?

No one has all the answers, of course, but valuable lessons can be gleaned from a timely, illuminating and, yes, powerful, new exhibit at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power is a 50-year retrospective of the work of one of America's foremost fashion photographers and portraitists, an ad man turned fine artist who devoted much of his career to capturing images of America's power elite.

From the 1940s until his death in 2004, Avedon traveled the world to photograph people who either exercised great power or were involved in power struggles of one kind or another. His subjects ranged from leading government, media and cultural figures to counter-cultural activists and ordinary citizens caught up in national debates.

The Corcoran has billed its exhibit as being particularly appropriate for this election period, since the gallery is close to the White House and the show includes photographs of six U.S. presidents (and at least one leading aspirant, Barack Obama).

"As we move toward an historic presidential election season in Washington, Avedon's political portraits seem utterly of the moment: an education on the last 50 years of our history," said Paul Roth, the Corcoran's curator of photography and media arts.

But the exhibit, which runs through Jan. 25, 2009 (just after Inauguration Day, not so coincidentally), offers much more than a glimpse of craggy politicians and bureaucrats.

Born in New York City in 1923, Avedon started as a fashion photographer and capitalized on his early success to become a leading portrait artist for American magazines, including Look and The New Yorker. He began by working on assignments from his editors, making photographs to accompany profile articles, much as Annie Liebowitz does today. His influence eventually became so great that he could originate his own photo essay projects and get them published, and his fame gave him access to practically anyone he wanted (Greta Garbo and Richard Nixon were two exceptions).

Avedon was fascinated by people with power - and not just the media-darling "celebrities" we might think of today. He always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, shooting a taunting Charlie Chaplin as he left New York in 1952 on the eve of his politically motivated exile from the U.S.; or the dancer Rudolf Nureyev in 1961 Paris, right after he defected from the Soviet Union (naked in the photo, to convey his newfound "freedom"), or contralto Marian Anderson as she became the first African-American to perform with New York's Metropolitan Opera.

Curated by Roth, this sweeping exhibit features more than 200 of Avedon's photographs, mostly black and white, and can be viewed on three levels.

First, it's a lavish and, in some ways, titillating portfolio of the famous and infamous over half a century - what they looked like and how they dressed. Plenty of big names are here, from Ezra Pound and Dorothy Parker to Malcolm X and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Early in his career, Avedon didn't focus on elected officials as much as he did writers, performers and others from various social and cultural spheres. The list was, to some extent, a function of the people Avedon was assigned to shoot, but it's also a comment on who was considered powerful in a given era and how that changed over the years. It would have been quite a cocktail party.

In many cases, Avedon's subjects appear old and grizzled, as if power has worn them down. But others, such as Norman Mailer in 1962, look fresh and relaxed, without a care in the world. It's a reminder that photography subjects generally have the power to convey what they want to convey about themselves - and it's the photographer's challenge to get beneath the surface.

Second, for students of photography, the exhibit is a chronicle of Avedon's inventiveness and changing approaches, both to photography and to his subjects.

As he experimented with different ways to convey a sense of power (or powerlessness) in his subjects, Avedon explored different ways to capture them on film. Early on, he airbrushed and retooled and cropped his photos to idealize his subjects and introduce an atmosphere of glamour and prestige. In the late 1960s, he shifted to photographing anti-war figures in a stark, minimalist style.

In the 1970s, he framed his subjects in mid-length close-ups to capture characteristic postures and facial expressions. Toward the end of his career, he returned to the expressionism of his early work, shooting his subjects gesturing or posing in ways that reinforced their public personas.

Finally, the exhibit is a comment on the viewers of photographs - and the power they have to use what they see in photography to shape their own lives.

From this survey, one can't draw any firm conclusions about power and its effects on people. A photo can only capture a slice of time. You can't necessarily tell from one shot whether someone is powerful.

At the same time, viewers are likely to learn something about themselves in this show. Studying Avedon's images, seeing how young and full of life some of his subjects looked and how poorly others aged, may take us back to where we were and how we felt when Kennedy was assassinated or the Berlin Wall fell. It's like looking in a mirror: In Avedon's photos of others, we ultimately see ourselves.

If you go

Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power runs through Jan. 25 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. N.W., Washington. Tickets are $10-$14. Call 202-639-1700 or go to corcoran.org.