The exhibition presents In the American West, the American photographer Richard Avedon's (1923-2004) landmark series of portraits, commissioned in 1979 by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. It was first shown there in 1985 and published in book form the same year by Harry N. Abrams, New York.
By the late 1970s Avedon was best known for his fashion work for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. He had already been given a retrospective at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, in 1962 and a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1978.
Between 1979 and 1984 he travelled the West each summer, seeking out truck stops, county fairs, rodeos, carnivals, oil fields, mining camps and slaughterhouses. He photographed over one thousand people against a sheet of white paper hung outdoors, in open shade, with no artificial light: ranch hands, miners, waitresses, drifters, carnival workers, the unemployed. Avedon wanted to broaden his portrayal of America to include uncelebrated people, whom he described as the hidden strength of the country.
The exhibition brings together the complete set of 110 engraver's prints made for the book, alongside archival material from The Richard Avedon Foundation that documents his working method: handwritten notes, working Polaroids and papers from the files he kept on individual sitters, including his correspondence with them.