Product Description

Avedon's "In the American West" was a large-scale project intended to create a portrait of Americans of the West. The photographer traveled for five years meeting and photographing the people of the West - ranch workers, roustabouts, bar girls, drifters, and gamblers. He focused on men and women who worked at hard, uncelebrated jobs and lead unheralded lives. When the work was exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum, a reporter at the local paper wrote, "this is not our West." The show was controversial and remains so. The book includes an essay by Avedon on his working methods and portrait philosophy, as well as a journal of the project by Laura Wilson. The new edition also includes a brief foreword by John Rohrbach, senior curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum, but is otherwise unchanged from the original book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #257840 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 184 pages

From Library Journal
Here, Avedon abandons fashion photography in favor of this collection of "strong, occasionally shocking portraits...of miners, drifters, wildcatters, slaughterhouse workers, and adolescents" (LJ 1/86).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Richard Avedon (1923-2004) was one of the most influential photographers of the second half of the 20th century. His portrait work comprises an authoritative record of our era and his fashion photography redefined the genre. Laura Wilson is a photographer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Washington Post Magazine, and London's Sunday Times Magazine. John Rohrbach is senior photography curator at the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth.

Customer Reviews

An Amazing Discovery of People
I was 13 when I first saw this collection of photographs. They awakened my mind to the reality of a world different from my own. Currently, I use the pictures as writing prompts which my sophomore students use for biographical writing. The powerful pictures move the students beyond their own everyday suburban lives into a world they will otherwise never see.

It's on the shelf with my other good ones
My son gave me this book years ago as a birthday gift. It's not one that I look at every day. In truth , sometimes years go by before I pick it up again. Always, the images beg to define their stories. I often wonder as the years pass, what has happened to those portrayed. Only once, as I recall, did Avedon return to shoot the subject twice. That image is of a young cowboy. Avedon initially captures the hope and wonder of what his future holds. The second image taken but a few years later already shows much of that hope diminished with the realization of this is all there is. Perhaps I read too much into it, but I think that's the power of the images. We read individually into them and perhaps with more than a little bias come to our own conclusions. Anytime I need a shot of creativity to look at our world and the people and stories within so that I too can try to capture on film, or now digitally, I need look no further than Avedon's book.

Amazing photographs
When I was a teen in the early eighties, I went to see the exhibit of these photos in SF, CA with my mother. From what I understand, Richard Avedon traveled the American West, photographing people that he came across in his everyday travels. They weren't beautiful supermodels, they weren't made up actors, they were real live people. I remember like it was yesterday, the huge black and white photos included the tired and haggard teen girl on the cover, a snake handler holding a disemboweled rattlesnake, a grizzled and mean looking prisoner with jail tattoos, insane asylum patients with wild eyed stares, scruffy drifters and many more. After the show, I talked my mom into buying the book for me, and took it home, where it's been a prized posession ever since. Every time anyone comes over to my home and checks it out, it always opens up a discussion. When it went out of print, I know that I was disappointed as folks always wanted a copy after seeing my own, and I think it's great that it's been re-issued. If you are a fan of photography that captures the stark realism of the human spirit, don't miss out on this book.