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Celebrity images focused on atmosphere, gravitas

Published online on Sunday, Sep. 06, 2009

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SAN FRANCISCO -- It would be entirely too much of a gimmick for a world-renowned museum, but imagine this: When you exited the expansive Richard Avedon photography show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a visitor could be blinded by a gauntlet of papparazi flash bulbs.

Can't you see it? As you walked out through a black tunnel, dozens of lights could pop-pop-pop right in front of you, creating for a moment the stunned, gauzy, star-struck aura of excitement that encompasses celebrityhood.

Talk about the perfect way to cap this handsomely mounted exhibition.

As I walked through the show, I had to wonder if there were any major celebrities from the second half of the 20th Century whom Avedon didn't meet. You name it, he photographed it: Movie stars. Musicians. Fashion icons. Artists. Politicians. Towering literary figures. Glamorous socialites. Himself.

It's the first major retrospective of Avedon's work since his death in 2004. In more than 200 images -- from his early street photographs in 1946 to the very last portrait he took, of the singer Bjork, just four months before his death -- the show is a fascinating parade of mostly famous names. Some of the most iconic images of the 20th Century are here: a young Bob Dylan in the rain, a vulnerable Marilyn Monroe, a preening Andy Warhol flanked by the young nude members of his Factory.

In nearly all of these hundreds of portraits, the subjects face the camera. There are no big, sunny smiles here. No cheesy Kodak grins. Instead of people's teeth catching our attention -- we're so conditioned to the standard conventions of photography that it's a reflex -- it's more about atmosphere, character, gravitas. Without the dazzling smiles, it's possible to slip past the masklike frivolity that so many people turn on for the camera and venture into more sobering, substantive territory.

As I wandered the exhibition, I found myself locking in on the eyes of the people whom Avedon photographed. When we're conversing with another person, we all follow scrupulous social conventions in terms of our gaze -- you're supposed to look at a person but not so intensely that you're staring them down -- but in a place like this, where these people are forever frozen in front of you, it's possible to fall into these subjects' eyes for as long as you want.

In one room, there's a mosaic display of dozens upon dozens of the famed politicians and policymakers whom Avedon photographed over the years: everyone from presidents (Ronald Reagan) to social activists (Cesar Chavez). There are so many of them that you have to keep looking down at the provided map to identify all of them.

What struck me in this room was the uniformity of the subjects. Most are men, of course, and most are white. And most are wearing the traditional business attire of suit, jacket and tie. For some reason I thought of upper-class Romans wearing togas, their chests puffed out and proud with the power of empire. Hundreds or thousands of years from now, today's business suits might seem as quaint or old-fashioned as ancient Roman garb, but the thing that will remain the same is the attitude of power and influence.

I enjoyed reconnecting in this show with so many famous visages, of course, but what really struck me was thinking about how, in this personality-obsessed culture of ours, the architecture of celebrity works. The celebrities themselves are obvious -- and readily available, of course. (And interchangeable, in a way.) But there's an infrastructure supporting those celebrities that remains mostly unseen.

With his amazing career, however, Avedon ceased being part of the scenery. He became a bigger celebrity than many of the people he photographed. This retrospective in his honor might not literally blind you with flash bulbs, but you still feel like you've taken a walk on the red carpet itself.