Richard Avedon

[Alan Gales]

Trump/Wiley 2016

[Michael R]

Careful - you'll get shut down for politics Anyway Drew can do it all so Trump would be dead weight for him.

[Drew Wiley]

Trump is dead to me. Or at least on my wish list of being so, but .. hold your fire, mods! ... not due to politics but environmental carnage. But Avedon, Trump?
All New Yorkers look the same to me.

[richardman]

To move thread out of "danger zone," lets talk about photography.

There is a current thread about someone thinking about selling 8x10 Impossible prints on the street. There have been and there are people who do that sort of thing, and usually their work is considered as souvenirs, i.e. not something someone would see in a gallery or museum.

On the other hand, you have people like Mr. Avedon, or Mr. Alec Soth etc. who "go out and make art", and their works command respect, controversies, and for some of those, $$ and praises from the art world.

I don't have a question, but please discuss :-)

[Drew Wiley]

Avedon was both chronologically and demographically well positioned to market his own excess of whatever - "noives" or hyperactivity. I suspect he was enjoying it and actually had a good laugh at himself sometimes. Playing the "controversial" side of "art" has been going on long long before he was ever born. He just knew how to surf it in his own way, at his own time. This ploy just got overwhelming in the 60's with the whole Pop art ethos. That poked fun at establishment art, but itself became a very predictable oppressive aesthetic regime, which now seems about as novel as Lawrence Welk. All kinds of work commands "respect". And I don't feel compelled to admire someone just because somebody else canonized them. Lots of lemmings out there, just following the leader, so to speak. Influence in art history, at least temporarily, is a slightly different subject, and obviously related to the degree of public exposure. I guess I too react to Avedon because I find a lot of his shots obnoxious. But in terms of visual strategy, few things bore me more than a blank white
sheet and gritty Tri-X cookie-cutter poses in front of them.

[Corran]

If only you were as economical with your words.

LOL!

I think anyone who talks like they are God's gift to photography should at least share a bit of work with us. It helps frame their opinions and is a point of reference. Not that I'm directing that towards anyone in particular - I do mean anyone.

Not that you can't/shouldn't have an opinion on art or an artist otherwise, but I think it's important as a frame of reference.

[Drew Wiley]

My medium is prints, not the web. Get it? Otherwise, if somebody happens like the work of Avedon, fine. I've seen an awful lot of it, and it impresses me less and
less over time. He's more relevant in terms of documenting the corny trends of the rich and famous, fashion, etc - in which he admittedly sought out the extremes.
All that stuff bores me; and his prints are hardly inspiring - just big and brash.

[DrTang]

I bought that book - the American West - at the swap meet for like 5 bucks.. andat first..I thought it was worth about that

While I did and do admire Avedon's work... I thought it might have been better named: 'all the odd people I could wrangle up in the American West'

It's not that hard to get good pix if you have people wrangling up odd people.. and feeding you film holders..but


there is still something..something more that sticks to you with that work.. it's more and maybe the American West IS the concept and production of the work..more than the work itself.. like..the American West of what..1979..is the process of gathering up the odd types to make a book

that's what we are..we are that in some sense

so I think he kind of nailed it..no?

[Drew Wiley]

NO! Having grown up with cowboys and Indians, literally, I can flatly state that to me it looks like a New Yorker's stereotype of the West - Avedon's "bug collection" pinned against a white background. He was a fish out of water in this respect. Not much empathy for his subject matter, though maybe flatlanders think so due to their own stereotypes. Like documentary projects of the South based upon Smokey and the Bandit. And that idioitic bee picture pretty much put the nail in the coffin for me. Staged, pretentious, predictable stunt for the era. Just another Avedon fashion show shoot.

[Dave Wooten]

..."What the Wiley said".