Gerrard R.
Google
Richard Avedon's Facing West exhibition is powerful because it strips away everything but the human spirit. To create these portraits, Avedon spent five years hauling a heavy wooden camera across the American West, taping white paper to the sides of trucks to create a makeshift studio. He stood beside the camera rather than behind it, looking his subjects directly in the eye to capture the "heads and hearts" you noticed. The massive scale of the Grosvenor Hill gallery is essential here. By printing these figures life-sized, Avedon forces a one-on-one confrontation between you and the subject, whether it's a soot-covered coal miner or a drifter. Curated by his granddaughter, the show moves from the grit of manual labor to the vulnerability of youth, proving his belief that a portrait is a shared fiction between the photographer and the person in front of the lens.