MISS JO IS A BIT OF A SHUTTERBUG, SO THIS WEEK SHE BEAT A FAST PATH TO THE OPENING OF A RICHARD AVEDON EXHIBIT at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art.
The Golden Gate City is the only U.S. stop for this retrospective of Avedon’s iconic black-and-white photos, and the first extensive peek at his life’s work since his death at 81 in 2004. The show runs through Nov. 28, 2009. On the first Tuesday of the month admission is free.
As a lens for hire by magazines and newspapers since the 1940s, Avedon became best known for his fashion photos, as well as his spare portraits of musicians, artists, authors, activists and politicians. With 200 photos, the SFMOMA exhibit hits the highlights, like his iconic 1959 shot of model Dovima in a Dior gown amid elephants and hay, or head shots of the Beatles (above) that became 8x10s tucked into The White Album in 1968.
There are also photos of the not-so-famous, including several from Avedon’s 1980-1985 American West series of working folk— stark-but-illuminating studies of farmhands, waitresses, snake skinners, bee keepers, transients and others. He posed his West subjects against a bright white paper background.
Avedon’s lifelong fascination with portraiture actually sprang from his first photography job, at 19 as a merchant marine taking functional I.D. pictures. His next job was as a department store advertising photographer, which got him noticed by the fashion title Harpers Bazaar. (The Richard Avedon Foundation has a good online timeline and archives of the photographer’s life and work.)
While his fashion photos captured movement and whimsy and are still a delight to see, Avedon’s photographs of cultural and political notables now have an odd, dated quality, including a large triptych of Andy Warhol and his naked crew from the Factory, which no longer seems shocking, but a little sad.
When Avedon’s portraits were first published, Miss Jo remembers feeling more captivated by his people-in-the-news images and now wonders whether some photos just aren’t meant to be enduring because they rely on the context of the times they were taken. Another example is of Avedon’s head shot of 1960s-1970s social activist and federal fugitive Abbie Hoffman, which now just looks like a dude with curly hair and beard stubble.
One of Miss Jo’s favorite Avedon pix is a closeup of his longtime muse, Audrey Hepburn, taken for the 1956 movie “Funny Face.” The movie has a Fred Astaire photographer character loosely based on Avedon, who in real life consulted on the movie’s aesthetics. The “Funny Face” Avedon photo focuses on Hepburn’s famous features– and was intentionally overexposed. The image appears in a darkroom scene and used in the movie’s poster, above.
Here’s a trailer for “Funny Face:”