In 1985, In the American West was released. Forty years later, Richard Avedon’s giant opus has lost none of its power. Quite the opposite. This series continues to reveal what it did not yet show at its very first exhibition, which received mixed critical reviews. Today, the Fondation Cartier-Bresson, in collaboration with the Richard Avedon Foundation and publisher Harry N. Adams, is bringing to light all the images from this long-out-of-print book, which is steeped in the history of photography. “We are arriving at a time in Europe where a number of retrospectives of great 20th-century photographers have been presented,” explains Clément Chéroux, director of the Fondation Cartier-Bresson and curator of the exhibition. “In this temporal convergence, it was time to delve into iconic series like Richard Avedon’s in more detail and to explore his art of portraiture here.”
A photographer’s eye
The cultural space thus immerses us in the initial context of the conception of this work, built between 1979 and 1984, based on an ambitious idea by Amon Carter, director of the small Fort Worth museum in Texas. “In 1978, Richard Avedon had a heart problem,” says Clément Chéroux. “He went to rest on his ranch in Montana. His steward, Wilbur Powell, took great care of him. In return, he decided to paint his portrait, which was published in Newsweek. The museum’s director discovers him with his shirt and cowboy hat, and decides to commission him for a series on the American West. A project that Richard Avedon will far exceed.”
At this time, the photographer was at the height of his powers. His portfolio was a constellation of celebrities and fashion figures. His recognizable style sublimates the whole in simple portraits against a white background and in neutral light. But Avedon had also already demonstrated the political and social dimension of his work in reportage. He cut his teeth in the Merchant Marine, photographing sailors with his Rolleiflex, documented the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and captured portraits of napalm victims in Vietnam and Saigon.
This commission, however, represents a pivotal moment in his career. From these ordinary people, a masterpiece of contemporary portraiture is born. With two of his assistants and his coordinator and photographer Laura Wilson, he traveled the roads of gypsum mills and oil fields, crisscrossing 17 states and 189 cities and towns. The result is a myriad of starkly authentic images of miners, waitresses, workers, fairground workers, farmers, saleswomen, vagrants, cowboys, patients, inmates…
The Cartier-Bresson Foundation is presenting for the first time 110 photographs, including diptychs and triptychs. “The hanging follows the book, from the first to the last image,” explains Clément Chéroux. “The blank pages are represented on the wall by a gap equivalent to the width of a frame, like a half-space. We have thus reproduced the rhythm of someone leafing through the book. We can see through this that Richard Avedon and Marvin Israel (1924-1984), artistic director, have constructed the rhythm of these images in a very precise manner.”
From intensity to contrast
Faces lined, freckled, serious, severe, defensive, sad, grave, exhausted, melancholic… When one looks back and analyzes them, these portraits of anonymous people never cease to reveal their secrets about this hidden side of the American myth.
“It’s a richness that we rediscover with every look,” Clément Chéroux reaffirms. “We were in the midst of Reagan’s America after the oil crises, who implemented very aggressive economic reforms towards the world of work. Avedon wanted to capture those who make America work. He showed how this neoliberal policy has profoundly attacked the sector. The book opens with someone who has lost their job. He thus opposed a triumphant America presented in soap operas like Dallas and Dynasty, focusing on what his country has lost in the midst of deindustrialization, where unemployment was at its highest, where many people had fallen below the poverty line.”
Preparatory Polaroids, test prints annotated by the photographer, correspondence between the artist and his models… The exhibition reveals previously unseen documents from the Richard Avedon Foundation to highlight the important work involved in printing. “Avedon went back and forth with the printer to look for details in the blacks, to brighten certain parts of the face. The Polaroids show how he met his subjects, organized his files by name and address to send them a print, and maintained his special relationships to go beyond the photo shoot. I also chose to present touching letters from his models. Behind each of these people lies a whole life. It’s a way of bringing back the human element beyond the flatness or two-dimensionality of the image.”
Laura Wilson’s foreword to In the American West , written like a logbook, is equally captivating. The institution adds to this wealth of archives in the display cases some of the photographs she took during these five years in her own book Avedon at Work (University of Texas Press, 2003), pushing the exploration further.
“The paradox of all great art”
From the beekeeper invaded by bees (Ronald Fischer) to the factory worker with her greenback necklace (Petra Alvarado) to the thirteen-year-old snake skinner (Boyd Fortin), Richard Avedon refines the staging and stylistic emphasis. “He needed to create disjunctions,” says Clément Chéroux. “The beekeeper remains a great image of the 20th century. After placing an ad, he chose this man suffering from alopecia, who no longer had any hair, no eyebrows. He took him to an entomologist who covered him with queen pheromones to attract bees. Through this staging, he wanted to make the audience understand that nothing is more complex than simplicity.”
Showman Juan Patricio Lobato, whose torso forms an S-shaped curve, adds to those he remembers. “We show this image with a letter from a woman writing to Richard Avedon. She was fascinated by this photo and asked him to create more. It becomes clear from reading that she fell in love with the subject. It also shows the power conveyed by the photographic image.”
“I don’t think the West in these portraits is any more accurate than John Wayne’s West,” declared Richard Avedon at the exhibition’s opening in 1985. The Cartier-Bresson Foundation is therefore deploying an interesting perspective on current events, where Trump wants to revive a certain American tradition. Ultimately, time speaks in the photographer’s favor. John Wayne’s West, like the imagery of Marlboro Country, remains frozen in this sentimental and worn-out vision, while Avedon’s continues to evolve today.
“Avedon was aware of the subjectivity of what he presents. He was also very familiar with art history and pictorial references, such as those of Rembrandt. He made carcasses of sheep and cattle appear like hallucinations among the workers. His photography is therefore no more objective than that of John Wayne’s westerns. And that is what he had been criticized for: representing a sad, unsmiling America, which does not correspond to the one dreamed of. These are the people that Walker Evans and the traveling photographers sought out during the conquest of the West. He demonstrated this paradox. And this is the term Roland Barthes uses for him: the paradox of all great art. Richard Avedon showed his own America, those we do not see, those we pass by without pausing, those who do the work, those who make America work.”
The exhibition Richard Avedon – In the American West is on display at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, from April 30 to October 12, 2025.
