The prints are the culmination of a tantalising commission by Mitchell A. Wilder, the Texan museum\u2019s first director. Wilder sponsored Avedon to spend five years \u2014 from 1979 to 1984 \u2014 documenting the normal working-class people of 21 of America\u2019s western states. <\/p>\n
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Roger Tims, Jim Duncan, Leonard Markley and Don Belak, coal miners, Reliance, Wyoming, August 29, 1979<\/p>\n
Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. The Richard Avedon Foundation, courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n
Avedon, a Jewish New Yorker, had made his name as a fashion photographer, capturing cover portraits for Harper\u2019s Bazaar and Vogue<\/a>. He usually shot beautiful models cinched in couture under studio lights, not drifters and miners in grubby clothes shot under the sky.<\/p>\n At the time of the commission, Avedon already had a formidable reputation: Henry Kissinger himself begged the photographer to \u201cbe kind to me\u201d when he sat for a portrait in 1976. Avedon was also shooting for Gianni Versace<\/a> and, in 1980, caused controversy with his advertisement campaign for Calvin Klein<\/a> jeans, which featured a 15-year-old Brooke Shields<\/a>.<\/p>\n An eye for the compelling<\/p>\n In between these high-flying commissions, Avedon and his assistant, Laura Wilson, were scouring the mythical West for ordinary sitters. Wilson acted as the fixer, approaching interesting subjects who would be shot in a makeshift studio that was little more than a large white sheet tacked onto a barn door. Avedon would prime his Deardorff camera, then stand to the side, chatting to the sitters to encourage naturalistic expressions. <\/p>\n Joe Dobosz, uranium miner, Church Rock, New Mexico, June 13, 1979<\/p>\n The Richard Avedon Foundation, courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n However \u201cnormal\u201d these subjects were, Avedon and Wilson had a keen eye for the compelling. Uranium and coal miners, rodeo contestants, and a barmaid all shot as though they could appear in Vogue. A close-up of Robert Dixon, a Colorado meat packer, could be straight from a contemporary GQ piece on Hackney hipsters; Robert Gonzalez, an inmate at a Texan jail, poses like a cover star, hip cocked, hair flowing.<\/p>\n There is something undeniably voyeuristic about the portraits. The sun-battered faces are stark against the white backdrop Avedon always favoured. \u201cI\u2019m looking for people who are surprising \u2014 heartbreaking \u2014 or beautiful in a terrifying way,\u201d he said of his project. \u201cBeauty that might scare you to death until you acknowledge it as part of yourself.\u201d And some of the photos are indeed spooky in their gorgeousness, the subject\u2019s piercing eyes seemingly following you as the larger-than-life portraits loom from the white walls.<\/p>\n Annette Gonzales, housewife, and her sister Lydia Ranck, secretary, Santuario de Chimayo, New Mexico, Easter Sunday, April 6, 1980<\/p>\n The Richard Avedon Foundation, courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n There is seriousness \u2014 particularly in the portrait of B.J. Van Fleet, a cherubic nine-year-old clutching a gun \u2014 but also style. Perhaps it\u2019s a testament to the artist\u2019s skill and the nostalgic glamour of silver gelatin. Still, the shirts worn by itinerant men and a cowboy\u2019s jeans appear astonishingly well-made to the modern viewer, surrounded as we are by shoddy clothes no longer designed to last.<\/p>\n The West without the romance<\/p>\n Facing West is a good subtitle. Although there are cowboys and farmhands aplenty, these photographs do not romanticise the West: there are no tumbleweeds, saddles or tobacco. Avedon\u2019s subjects are confrontational, tired and often smeared with the grime of dangerous hard labour. This was not Avedon\u2019s first rodeo when it came to probing the fissures at the heart of American culture; he was also photographing radicals and protesters in the same style.<\/p>\n Robert Dixon, meat packer, Aurora, Colorado, June 15, 1983<\/p>\n The Richard Avedon Foundation, courtesy Gagosian<\/p>\n Most striking of all in a contemporary context is a 1979 portrait of a man referred to only as an \u201cunidentified migrant worker\u201d, taken at the Texan border town of Eagle Pass. Bare-chested with a shirt slung over one shoulder, his skin glistens. Would he be safe posing for such a portrait today? <\/p>\n Avedon\u2019s people of the American West, preserved in silver, are long gone. He photographed the powerful and the powerless in the same unflinching manner. Facing West demonstrates how much strength there is, still, in the portrait of humanity.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Richard-Avedon-Facing-West.jpeg\")
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