Paris: Avedon, at last
Au Jeu de Paume
You’d think the French would have been falling over the man who revolutionised fashion photography in the ’50s, wouldn’t you?
Turning his back on all those daft studio poses, Richard Avedon stuck Suzy Parker on roller skates, and a Dior-draped Dovima between real elephants at the Cirque d’Hiver. But no, this is the first ever expo on Avedon. Too commercial, you see. Anyway, here he is at last, redeemed among French intellos by virtue of his later, “serious” work. The show embraces the full canon of his work, from fashion shoots to his astonishing portraits of everyday people, In the American West.
In his commercial guise, Avedon was hired by just about everyone in high society. He caught Marilyn Monroe, pensive, in the blink between giggle and pout. The Duke of Windsor and Wallace Simpson drip disappointment from every pore. The exhibition blurb manages to be both gracious and sniffy about these portraits. Despite earning pots of money, it explains, Avedon “never sought to please – quite the contrary.” Seek to please? Be well paid for pleasing? Quel horreur!
In the American West, though, was an intensely personal project for Avedon. In his fashion shoot years, he once said he rarely saw beauty in a young face. That rings true of his portrait of the freckle-faced girl from Rocky Ford, Colorado, her gaze old beyond her 12 years. Likewise, the striking photograph of the 13 year-old rattlesnake skinner, who holds up his stock in trade, entrails and all. These images – of truckers, factory workers, cons, drifters – are by turns dignified, unsettling, enigmatic. The double portrait of Clarence Lippard, homeless on the Interstate 80, is not easily forgotten…but then neither is Avedon on Truman Capote. “My photographs don’t go beyond the surface,” said the photographer in 1980. “They don’t go below anything. I have great faith in surfaces.” Catch the show while you can.
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Richard Avedon until 27 Sep ‘08 at the Jeu de Paume, 1 place de Concorde. www.jeudepaume.org
