The Good, the Negative and the Graceful: The Way the Celebrated Artist Richard Avedon Documented Growing Old

The photographer Avedon disliked the aging process – but he existed amidst it, laughed about it, viewed it piteously and, above all else, fatalistically. “I’m getting on,” he often remarked in his earlier years during his sixties. Throughout his career, he produced a vast portfolio of the consequences of ageing on the human face, and of its inevitability. For someone originally, and maybe in public perception to this day, most associated with pictures of the young and beautiful, energy and happiness – the girl swirling her skirt, skipping over a wet patch, enjoying arcade games late at night in Paris – an equal portion exists of his body of work centered around the aged, wrinkled, and knowledgeable.

The Complexity in Human Nature

His associates often noted that he was the youngest person in the room – yet he had no desire to be the youngest person in the room. This was, if not exactly an insult, a triviality: what Dick wanted was to be the most complex individual present. He cherished blended sentiments and opposition inside a solitary portrait, or sitter, more than a clumping at either end of the emotional spectrum. He admired pictures like the famous Leonardo da Vinci that juxtaposes the silhouette of a handsome young man with an elderly man having a strong jaw. Thus, in a striking combination of images depicting cinematic auteurs, initially one might perceive the belligerent John Ford contrasted with the gentle Renoir. Ford’s curled lip and ostentatious, furious eye covering – such a covering appears hostile in its insistence on forcing your recognition of the absent orb – viewed alongside the gentle humanist glance from Renoir, who at first glance as a wise French creative saint of the same kind as the painter Georges Braque.

However, observe more closely, and both Ford and Renoir are equally belligerent and benevolent, the boxer-like snarl on their faces contrasting with the warmth in their look, and Renoir’s asymmetrical gaze is equally shrewd as it is saintly. Ford might be challenging us (in a typically American way), however, Renoir is evaluating us. The easy complementary cliches about humanistic ideals are either contradicted or enhanced: people aren't made into filmmakers through mere friendliness. Aspiration, technique and determination are portrayed here too.

A Battle With Stereotypes

The photographer battled with the cliches of portraiture, involving stereotypes of growing old, and all that felt either merely pious or excessively scenic irritated him. Opposition fueled his creative work. At times, it proved hard for his sitters to believe that he didn't intend to diminish them or betraying them when he told them that he appreciated what they concealed as much as what they were proud to display. This explained partly Avedon found it difficult, and never entirely succeeded, in taking on his own aging persona – on one hand depicting himself as too irate in a way that was entirely uncharacteristic, or on the other hand too stern in a style that was too isolated, maybe due to the fact that the crucial opposition within his own personality was as invisible to him as his models' were to themselves. The sorcerer could perform spells with other people but not himself.

The true paradox within his personality – contrasting the earnest and severe student of human accomplishment that he represented and the driven, fiercely ambitious energy inside the New York scene he was frequently described as – was not apparent to him, just as our own paradoxes escape us. A late-in-life documentary presented him thoughtfully wandering the Montauk cliffs outside his house, deep in contemplation – a spot he truly didn't frequent, staying indoors on the telephone with friends, advising, consoling, devising strategies, taking pleasure.

Genuine Muses

The old men and women who understood how of existing in two states simultaneously – or even more things than that – were his true subjects, and his gift for somehow conveying their varied personas in a highly concentrated and outwardly concise solitary photograph stays awe-inspiring, unparalleled in portrait history. His peak performance often occurs with the most challenging subjects: the antisemite Ezra Pound cries out from the anguish of existence, and the Windsor royal couple transform into a terrified alarmed Beckett-like pair. Even individuals he held in high regard were enhanced by his vision for their inconsistencies: The composer stares at the viewer with a direct look that is almost stricken and strategic, both a man of surly genius and a man of calculation and ambition, a brilliant mind and a tradesman.

WH Auden is a druid and oracle, face lined with care, and a silent comedian on an ungainly walk, a wanderer in the Lower East Side with house shoes on in the snow. (“I woke up and it was snowing, and I desired to photograph Auden in it Avedon once described, and he called the likely confused yet agreeable poet and requested to photograph him.) His photograph of his longtime companion the author Truman Capote shows him as much smarter than he pretended to be and darker than he confessed. Regarding the older Dorothy Parker, He continued to value her essence as her looks faded, and, registering accurately her decline, he highlighted her fortitude.

Overlooked Portraits

A photograph I previously ignored shows Harold Arlen, the great songwriter who combined blues music with jazz to Broadway melody. He was part of a class of men {whom Avedon understood unconditionally|that A