Far from the idyllic vision of the West portrayed in so many Hollywood movies, Richard Avedon’s series “in the American West (1979–1984)” beautifully presented at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson shows the real people living in the American West. Commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, Avedon spent years encountering, selecting and photographing ordinary people across 21 western states, mainly working-class, white, poor, men and women: drifters, oil field workers, miners, waitresses, prisoners, slaughterhouse workers, farmers. His portraits are all taken in daylight, against a plain white background, using an 8×10 large-format camera, showing all the details and emphasising on the faces of his models, creating an incredible encounter with their physical presence, expressions, and details, piercing eyes, wrinkles, dirt, scars, blood, oil. The result of this monumental series of 125 portraits presents a true portrait of the people living there, leaving us unsettled and moved. I was particularly impressed by the youth of some of the models, their defiant look, the toughness in their eyes. I left with a message to Avedon, beyond the grave, to seek out these persons today and take photographs of them 40 years later. What has happened to them in the Trump era? I am afraid of the answer.
