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Richard Avedon disliked the aging process – and yet he existed amidst it, laughed about it, saw it with pity and, most importantly, with resignation. “I’m getting on,” he declared in his earlier years during his sixties. Over his professional life, he made innumerable images of the impact of growing old on facial features, and of its inevitability. For a man originally, and perhaps in the world’s imagination to this day, primarily linked to images of youth and beauty, vitality and joy – a young woman twirling her dress, jumping across water, engaging in pinball in the City of Light after dark – a comparable amount is present of his oeuvre devoted to the elderly, experienced, and sagacious.

The Complexity in Human Nature

His friends often noted that he appeared as the most youthful individual present – but he didn’t want to hold that youthful title. This was, if not exactly an insult, a banality: what Avedon sought was to be the most multifaceted figure there. He adored mixed emotions and opposition within a single image, or model, rather than a grouping at either end of the emotional spectrum. He was drawn to photographs comparable to the celebrated Leonardo piece that juxtaposes the profile of a beautiful youth with a senior with a pronounced chin. Therefore, in an elegant duo of images depicting cinematic auteurs, initially one might perceive the aggressive John Ford set against the gentle Renoir. Ford’s curled lip and ostentatious, angry eye patch – an eye patch is angry in its persistence on forcing your recognition of the missing eye – observed in contrast to the kind, philosophical look from Renoir, who appears initially as a wise French creative saint comparable to the artist Braque.

But look again, and both Ford and Renoir show matching combativeness and compassion, the fighter's twist of their mouths contrasting with the beam in their eyes, and the director's unbalanced observation is as calculating as it is saintly. Ford might be challenging us (in a typically American way), yet Renoir is assessing us. The straightforward, matching tropes regarding humanism are either subverted or enriched: men do not become movie directors through mere friendliness. Drive, skill and determination are portrayed here too.

A Struggle With Stereotypes

Avedon was at war with the cliches of portraiture, encompassing aging tropes, and all that felt just sanctimonious or overly idealized offended him. Contradiction drove his artistic process. It was difficult sometimes for his sitters to believe that he was not belittling them or being disloyal to them when he expressed to them that he appreciated what they were hiding just like what they proudly showed. This was one reason Avedon found it difficult, and couldn't completely achieve, in addressing his own aging persona – either making himself look too angry in a way that was entirely uncharacteristic, or else too firm in a style that was too isolated, possibly since the vital contradiction within his own personality was as invisible to him as his models' were to themselves. The wizard could create wonders on others but not for himself.

The real contradiction within his personality – contrasting the earnest and severe scholar of human achievement that he represented and the driven, fiercely ambitious energy in New York City he was frequently described as – was invisible to him, similar to how we miss our own oppositions. A documentary made near the end of his life presented him thoughtfully wandering the bluffs in Montauk near his home, deep in contemplation – a place in fact he never went, remaining inside communicating via phone with associates, advising, soothing, devising strategies, enjoying.

Authentic Foci

The elderly individuals who had mastered the art of being dual-natured – or even multiple personas – served as his genuine subjects, and his talent for somehow conveying their varied personas in a highly concentrated and seemingly laconic solitary photograph continues to astonish, unparalleled in portrait history. He is often at his best with the most challenging subjects: the prejudiced poet Pound screams with existential agony, and the Windsor royal couple become a frightened anxious duo reminiscent of Beckett characters. Even the people he admired were complimented by his eye for their asymmetries: Stravinsky gazes toward us with a levelled gaze that seems nearly afflicted and strategic, simultaneously a ill-tempered genius and an individual of strategy and drive, a brilliant mind and a tradesman.

WH Auden is a druid and oracle, countenance showing concern, and a mute humorist out for an awkward flat-footed walk, a pilgrim on the Lower East Side wearing slippers in snowy conditions. (“I arose to see snow falling, and I desired to photograph Auden in it Avedon once described, and he telephoned the likely confused yet agreeable poet and sought permission to capture his image.) His portrait of his old friend Truman Capote presents him as much smarter than he chose to pretend and more malicious than he acknowledged. Regarding the older Dorothy Parker, He continued to value her essence for her face becoming less “beautiful”, and, accurately noting her deterioration, he emphasized her bravery.

Neglected Images

A photograph I previously ignored shows Harold Arlen, the celebrated music writer who combined blues music with jazz to Broadway melody. He was among a category of artists {whom Avedon understood unconditionally|that A