Richard Avedon's rugged American West

In The American West by Richard Avedon appeared in 1985. On the fortieth anniversary Abrams is reissuing the publication. Avedon was renowned for his fashion photography and celebrity portraiture. But a photograph of a very different nature caught the eye of the director of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas: a modest portrait of a farmer in Montana. It earned Avedon a commission from the museum to capture his view of the American West. Avedon spent the next six years, traveling the Western states, photographing coal miners, cotton farmers, cowboys and drifters. For some it was improper that a glamorous New Yorker would take such pictures of the rugged inhabitants of the American West. The portraits from the American West may not be romantic images but they are dignified. People stand tall and proud.