Avedon

I went to see the Richard Avedon exhibit at the SF MOMA. I didn't know how to feel about Avedon before going. Part of me wanted to hate his work- to look at the images as contrived attempts to create the human being as a one-dimensional specimen, pinned to the white void like a dead buttery in science museum, a stuffed ancient mammoth to gawk at. (As you may or may not know his work for In The American West was highly manipulated- carefully picked "working class, average" Americans, worked into poses and shots he controlled.)



However, I loved his work as an event, an activity, an engagement. You go into these white rooms filled with super-sized prints of humans, giant action figures. The room, for all its starkness, is filled with stories. A odd form of people watching that creates a stage for oral histories. You can hear the spectators, reading into the images, spinning tales about the person's life based upon the a frozen glimmer in an eye, the muscle tone in of a belly, a scar on a stomach, or an endless speckling of sun damage on the bridge of a nose- these things are not contrived.

Never have I seen a photography exhibition so filled with sound. For this I commend him. (And for the above Malcolm X shot, that happens to be my favorite.)


And just because, the bridge in the SF MOMA. The use of bar grate is my favorite part. A sense of solid floor, and then, yikes, sudden vertigo as you look down and discover you can see down to the people on the bottom level.