pete mcgovern

 

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Avedon said he would have been happy to keep the 'American West' portrait series going for the rest of his life. AI is now ready to try and fill that gap.  Text terms: black and white photograph "richard avedon" "american west" book portrait drifter white background

An incredible 17,000 sheets of film, 752 sittings. Funded by the Amon Carter Museum to the tune of $100,000 between 1979-84. ( $300,000 in 2025 money ). The scale of the endeavour was remarkable. I blame youtube for getting caught up on the Avedon 'American West' project. Once you watch one random video thrown up by the algorithm it feeds two more, then another couple. Et cetera, etc. The unexpectedly wonderful surprise was 'Avedon at Work' , a book of images and insights by Laura Wilson who had been his assistant in the project two decades prior. While the Avedon book timed out on my imagination many years ago to see the process and engagement brings it to life in a whole new dramatic and thrilling way. I've managed to resist buying any photography books for quite some time but I'm so tempted by this one. When Avedon was commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum to create the images that would become In the American West, he needed an assistant to scout photograph...

The Winter issue of Source is about new photography organisations. Despite the economic downturn and the dominance of digital technology the last five years has seen the appearance of new galleries, publications and festivals dedicated to the medium. Jennifer Good has spoken to the people behind five new photo galleries: Third Floor Gallery, White Cloth Gallery, Fishbar, Hotshoe Gallery (which has since closed) and Brancolini Grimaldi.  - 2012 My browser always opens on an old page on the Source website, the one which has the text above about new photography gallery spaces. I decided to look how they were doing, and hats off to the people who took the mad decision to open them but disappointingly, (inevitably?), all of them had closed in a year or two, apart from Fishbar, which last put on a show seven months ago, albeit in a borrowed space. Of the five the only one I visited was the Brancolini Grimaldi, twice, I think, including to the Joachim Brohm show in the link.  Third ...

This is one of several prize wnning books I've been reading lately and the one I've stuck with after bailing on the previous two. I'm not sure why I'm staying with this one. It offers limpid writing of that particular Japanese style designed to assuage life's tensions, but at times I'm tempted to say it's really for 12 year olds. Overly sensitive ones. Who are very lonely. As a reward after they have dutifully finished three hours of homework. What has been curious is the way the oh so depthless depiction of scenes occasionally brings in a particularly overt nod to Zen spiritual teaching. These moments would, I imagine, be mostly super conspicuous to a Japanese or Chinese reader, and firmly impress the philosophy of the book beyond any doubt. The Western reader loses nothing by not knowing when the Zen paintbrush is being applied, and perhaps gains as it seems rather heavy-handed. The first daub was referencing a famous zen koan, and giving it a slight, and ...

Many thousands of years ago I remember an evening TV arts programme deigning to discuss... a photography book. (It has never been attempted since by a national broadcaster.) It was Richard Avedon's portrait series from his adventure into the wilds,  ' In the American West '.  The guests discussing it were the regular line up of writers and crtics, cultured in literature and theatre, but, it quickly became apparent, who knew nothing about American photography, or likely any photography. So, perhaps inevitably, someone eventually proffered a rather odd, but forceful, interpretation, of one particular picture, John Harrison, Lumber Salesman, and His Daughter Melissa, Lewisville, Texas, November 22, 1981. This picture of John and his daughter Melissa was said to foreshadow Melissa's life, resorting to literalism to deduce the toddler will permanently have her world turned upside down - by being in the care of such an over-bearing father.  No-one saw fit to contradict. Fate ...

If two money-less artists met in the street in nineteen fifties new york and asked one another, ' are you working? ' the reply might well be, ' no, I've got a job at the moment '.