Richard Avedon’s Timeless Portraits of the American West

Between 1979 and 1984, the fêted US photographer Richard Avedon – at the moment finest recognized for his style images and celeb portraiture – ventured throughout 21 states with a small crew of assistants in a bid to seize the unknown denizens of the American West. He shot outdoor on an old school 8 x 10 inch digicam, erecting a white backdrop towards which to seize his topics, who included miners, cowboys, slaughterhouse staff, waitresses, truckers, youngsters and drifters. The end result grew to become In the American West, a collection of 126 large-scale prints, whittled down from greater than 1,000 sittings performed.

Titled with the topics’ title, age and occupation, every {photograph} is a masterclass in emotionally wrought storytelling. “I’m looking for a new definition of a photographic portrait … ” Avedon had acknowledged, “people who are surprising – heartbreaking – or beautiful in a terrifying way. Beauty that might scare you to death until you acknowledge it as part of yourself”. Suffice to say, he succeeded: collectively, the works characterize some of the famend portrait collection of the twentieth century. Now, simply over 40 years after its unveiling on the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, Avedon’s granddaughter Caroline Avedon, curator and archivist at The Richard Avedon Foundation, is providing viewers the prospect to reappraise the undertaking with Facing West, a brand new exhibition opening at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill house in London.

“When I started at the foundation, I was tasked with organising the hundreds of Polaroid images taken of the subjects during the [making of the] western series,” Caroline Avedon tells AnOther of the second that In the American West first acquired below her pores and skin. “Wow, was I taken aback. The sheer volume of people, all so unique and beautiful in their own ways, sparked a very intense admiration for the project.” For this exhibition, she has chosen to showcase 21 prints from amongst Avedon’s last choice with the purpose of shedding mild on pictures she feels “have not yet had the chance to speak for themselves … and that might appeal to my generation [Gen Z], because each generation has to learn about the work anew.”

Her curation is each arresting and well timed. Avedon’s shot of Freida Kleinsasser, a 13-year-old member of the Hutterite colony, appears like a up to date style editorial, courtesy of the lady’s putting styling, mixed with the timelessness of the studio-style set-up. His image of BJ Van Fleet, in the meantime, a chubby-cheeked nine-year-old confidently toting a shotgun, feels eerily related – maybe extra so than when it was taken – as does the candid portrait of an unidentified migrant employee, the one topic whose title and age weren’t included by the photographer.

Avedon described these pictures as representing “a fictional West …,” declaring, “I don’t think the West of these portraits is any more conclusive than the West of John Wayne”. And but there’s an unflinching intimacy and individuality to the works – a laying naked of kinds, heightened by the shortage of environmental distractions and the directness with which the topics strategy Avedon’s lens. “Each sitter’s comfort was important to Avedon,” Caroline Avedon explains, detailing how her grandfather would typically stand in entrance of or subsequent to his digicam whereas capturing in order to forge a deeper bond with these he was photographing. “As people, we are often focused on how we are perceived by others. Avedon wanted to strip that away. Anyone can pose for a camera and smile, but how do we drop the mask and be ourselves in a moment of vulnerability? That was his sole focus.”

Indeed, within the age of maximum division, the deep humanity of the works is what Caroline Avedon is most eager to focus on. “My aim was to show that although we may all feel very differently about specific issues, at our core we are the same,” she says. She has intentionally located the extra “weighty” works at first of the present, whereas the “lighter, more hopeful” pictures come later: “I hope that viewers, especially younger viewers looking at Avedon for the first time, grasp the resilience of the subjects of In the American West,” she concludes. “At the end of the day, we are all just searching for optimism and hope.”

Richard Avedon: Facing West is on present at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill in London from 15 January – 14 March 2026.