Originally Posted by
Drew Wiley
Well, I don't read into his white sheet backdrops a "democratization" of his subjects at all. That's more an art critic's retro assessment, I suspect. At a certain point he found it to be an effective graphic tool, and then kinda became a stuck record with it. For example, note his cookie cutter individual cutouts of steelworkers, welders, etc, splayed like steamed crabs against white backdrops. That was indeed interesting as a graphic novelty at first, but doesn't do much for something allegedly in the West, where it's like looking at zoo animals in artificial cages devoid of any native context, which Avedon would probably have been incapable of appreciating anyway. Maybe some people like that he was an outsider, but it leaves me cold.