Szabo Symposium : Paul Roth and Frank Goodyear

On Thursday, October 30, 2008 Paul Roth and Frank Goodyear gave a lecture on the work of Richard Avedon, specifically his work dealing with power. The lecture began with Colby Caldwell giving a brief introduction to Avedon’s work. Included in that introduction was a quote by Avedon: “The photograph is a record of the transaction between the photographer and the subject. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” I found this statement to be quite pertinent when thinking about the issue of the “authentic moment” in the landscape which I am trying to show the audience in my current work. According to Avedon’s above thought, the simple fact that the work is a photograph is showing that I am having some sort of interaction, or transaction, with my subject, the landscape. While this is a fundamental idea, it makes me think more clearly about the fact that the interaction is already present in the work; it is the nature of the interaction that I am trying to convey. The second half of the quote also has resonance with my current working process. Over the past few months I have been trying to create photographs that accurately and honestly depict my interaction with the landscape. Avedon’s thought that photographs are accurate, that they capture a moment in time accurately encourages me to further loosen some of the rules that I have set up for myself in creating the photographs.

Frank Goodyear took a very interesting approach to studying Avedon’s career and creative process by interviewing the subjects of his portraits. I found the descriptions of Avedon’s working methods to be quite interesting and very different from my own. When I work in portraiture I have the model come to the location and work with them for about an hour, usually a bit less. I do my best to make the sitter feel comfortable and talk with them throughout. I feel as if I have some power but most of my power as the photographer is put into trying to make the sitter feel comfortable. This is in stark contrast to Avedon. His portrait sessions were characterized by words like brief, intense, short, and awkward. Such intense differences in process interest me.

Another aspect of Goodyear’s talk that interested me was the varying opinions about who controlled what happened in the portrait: Avedon, or the sitter. For example, during his discussion of James Carville who was photographed by Avedon in 2004, he said that Avedon seemed to allow people to photograph themselves and Carville himself said that Avedon “allowed me to be myself.” However, other sitters such as Jerry Brown felt that Avedon knew exactly what he wanted from the portrait going into the shoot. This dichotomy fascinates me as I often oscillate between the two working methods.

Paul Roth’s discussion of Avedon’s work was fascinating. His complete and thorough knowledge of Avedon’s methods, personal life, professional life, working process, and thought process was impressive, interesting, and enlightening. During Roth’s discussion he quoted Avedon as saying he was trying to “take the lying and the romance out of the picture.” I think this attempt can be clearly seen in Avedon’s work, especially during the years that he worked in his “mature” style using an 8 x 10 camera and a white backdrop. This style occludes a lot of visual information that could be used to draw connections or characterize readings of a portrait, leaving only the face, body position, clothing, and hair to relate information about the portrait. In the past I have worked in this way, using a white wall as my back drop and black and white photography to leave out the information brought to a portrait by color and surroundings. Earlier this semester I planned to work on a portraiture project that studied exactly what objects and location brought to a portrait. Revisiting this idea seems even more interesting now. Aspects of color versus black and white, setting, props, and clothing, among other things, could be manipulated in order to test what a portrait conveys through the different components.