The Making Of in the American West

Abstract

In the American West was a landmark in the career of New York photographer Richard Avedon and in the history of photography. It consisted of a series of larger-than-life black-and-white portraits of men and women living in rural America, posing in front of an immaculate white background and gazing intently at the camera. Instead of playing to the traditional myth of the openness and grandeur of the West as the title might imply, Avedon had focused his camera on people who were the antithesis of that myth: miners, housewives, farmers, and drifters. The large prints were mounted onto aluminum and exhibited without glazing, which intensified the gaze of the sitters. Unveiled in 1985 at the Amon Carter Museum, which had commissioned the project, the work was acclaimed and criticized with equal fervor. This paper focuses on the materials employed and the aesthetic choices made by the artist for the printing, mounting, and display of the photographs, and their impact on the long-term preservation of the work.