San Diego Museum Presents Richard Avedon

On view at San Diego Museum of Art through Sept. 6, the exhibition traces Avedon’s interest in, and fascination with, politics from the 1950s until his death in 2004. Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power contains rarely seen photographs — many of which are drawn from the collection of The Richard Avedon Foundation — and never-been-exhibited or published works.

Richard Avedon was the most important American fashion photographer and portraitist of his time. Starting as a photographer in the Merchant Marine during World War II, Avedon learned the ropes by creating identification portraits. He later photographed for such notable publications as Harper’s Bazaar , Vogue and The New Yorker.

“Throughout the history of art, portraiture has been used to show and honor leaders,” explained Derrick R. Cartwright, San Diego Museum of Art’s executive director. “Walking through SDMA’s galleries, visitors can see images ranging from Van Dyck’s portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria of England to the Avedon photographs of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Barack Obama. Avedon’s portraits reveal aspects of these leaders’ personalities that one might not have noted before. They evince character and show us vulnerabilities.”

Featured in the exhibition is the groundbreaking series, The Family. Commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine in 1976, this series contains portraits of elected officials, government bureaucrats, lawyers, and lobbyists — all members of the American political, military, media, and corporate elite. Contrary to his normal practice, Avedon allowed his subjects to choose their own poses in this series in order to provide a more naturalistic representation of each model’s personality.

“Richard Avedon’s name became synonymous with portrait photography in the late 20th century,” said Cartwright. “As part of a year-long program during which we are going to celebrate the creative work of that century, there is no better way for us to kick off this thematic emphasis than to pay homage to Avedon’s talent. San Diego Museum of Art is honored to have the opportunity to display Avedon’s work in one of two U.S. showings.” -- www.sdmart.org