Artist Statement and Critiques

A museum curator once told me that people did not go to Richard Avedon to just get their portrait taken, they went to him so that people would know they had “made it”. During a summer photography class, I when to The San Diego Museum of Art, to see Richard Avedon Portraits of Power. I entered the exhibit. Along it’s white walls were Avedon’s innovations in fashion photography, that he did early in his career at Harper’s Bazaar. Around the corner the wall was covered from the floor to the ceiling with the work that he did for Rolling Stone called The Family 1976, which showcased 69 of the most powerful people in America during the 1976 election campaign. I continued to see a portrait of Malcolm X next to other pictures from the Civil Rights era. Nearing the end of the exhibit I saw, scattered systematically over one wall of the gallery, his final unfinished work Democracy 2004. Jon Stewart’s picture was the first to catch my eye followed by Bill O’Reilly and Karl Rove. My eyes then turned to the biggest picture in the section, a picture of Barrack Obama, that was the last in the collection.
Before I went to that exhibit, I thought of portraits as a boring and clichéd style of photography, reserved only for the non-artist. After seeing that collection of photography I realize how it is possible to capture the rawness of ones human emotions through the lens of a camera. Avedon captured the real face of society in an unbiased way. Even Avedon’s fashion photography, influenced Alexey Brodovitch and Martin Munkacsi, revolutionized the way a photograph was perceived. Being an aspiring photographer, his portraits impacted my view on photography and my developing style. I plan to build on the innovations in Richard Avedon work.