Richard Avedon’s Portraits of Aging Go On View on the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

A person who was older and able of energy as soon as stated to me, “I feel sad for you. You’ve already been the most beautiful you will ever be, and now you have to spend the rest of your life watching your beauty fade.” I used to be simply 30. I discovered a dermatologist, obtained Botox. “At your age,” this physician informed me, “it’s preventative.” The message was clear: Render your face immovable—lifeless!—and avert the disaster of growing older.

Next Thursday, a commanding meditation on that disaster, “Richard Avedon: Immortal,” opens on the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Subtitled “Portraits of Aging, 1951–2004,” it options almost 100 images that dramatize our common mortality. Considered scandalous when Avedon started taking them, within the early 50s, the portraits struck many critics as “attention-grabbing,” a photographic “revenge” in opposition to his celebrated topics or an act of penance for his early work in vogue, the place youth and wonder reign.