‘These photographs of the power structure of America - heads of unions, people in government, bankers, heads of media - are a composite portrait of the power elite, but I didn’t feel anything about most of these people. I didn’t want to pit Democrats against Republicans, or good versus bad. It's too easy for a photographer to do that. In a way these pictures were almost taken by the people in the pictures. I didn’t tell them what to wear. I didn’t tell them how to pose. However they presented themselves, I recorded with very little manipulation.’
The 1970s were a t.mes of economic and, to an extent, political upheaval in the United States: the Vietnam War, the 1972 Watergate affair, and the resignation of President Nixon had contributed to a widespread mistrust of the government and politicians. This coincided with a maturing in Richard Avedon’s career who was increasingly focused on using his craft to document these changing and tumultuous t.mes s. Against this backdrop, and on the occasion of America’s Bicentennial celebration, Rolling Stone commissioned Avedon to create a series of portraits of political subjects. This special issue of Rolling Stone, titled 'The Family', was published on 21 October 1976, immediately prior to the 2 November presidential election, with the following introduction:
'Early this year we asked Richard Avedon--one of the world's greatest photographers--to cover America's bicentennial presidential election. Our original idea was to publish a chronicle of the campaign--the candidates and the conventions--from beginning to end. Shortly after accepting our commission, Mr. Avedon called to say that there was more to the election than met the eye; that the real story was not simply the candidates, but a broad group of men and women--some of whom we had never heard of before--who constitute the political leadership of America. Thus began a special issue of Rolling Stone. . . Aside from the accompanying Who's Who biographies, there is no text; we think the portraits speak for themselves.'
Avedon first made his reputation as a fashion photographer, working as a staff photographer for Harper’s Bazaar from 1944 to 1965, but by the t.mes of the Rolling Stone assignment he was also known for his portrait work - austere studies of people in the public eye. Unlike his fashion photographs (see Suzy Parker, Lot 19), the majority of Avedon’s later portrait work was not initiated by commercial assignments; it was often self-generated and motivated by personal conviction (see William Casby, Lot 39). In 1970, Avedon had traveled to Vietnam to depict the Mission Council, the highest-ranking military and civilian managers of the US side of the war. For this he adopted a non-committal, deadpan attitude – like a police photographer faced with a line-up – and the approach influenced his future work on 'The Family'. Indeed it is for his portraiture that the photographer has received greatest critical acclaim, being credited with the reinvention of the genre of photographic portraiture with his ‘radically purified approach to the genre’ (Maria Morris Hambourg & Mia Fineman, ‘Avedon’s Endgame’ in Richard Avedon Portraits, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002).
Avedon’s ‘The Family’ portraits were accompanied in the magazine by biographies listing the achievements of the sitters. Not all of the pictured sitters were elected officials, hinting at the many forces that make up the highest ranks of American political, economic, and cultural leadership.
Avedon’s innate sympathies lay with liberal politics; in 1963 he had photographed the Civil Rights Movement in the South; in 1969, the Anti-War Movement across the whole of America. With 'The Family', however, the photographer tried to avoid expressing any opinion about his sitters, preferring to let them pose themselves in an attempt to avoid any implicit bias in the composition of his shots. He stood a fixed distance from each subject and posed them against a stark white background, black negative edges showing, with uniform lighting. He removed all accessories, insignia, and historical paintings, thereby rendering the sitters completely politically neutral. The effect is reminiscent of identification cards, collects or materials such as baseball cards, or even mugshots. As a result, these strong and charismatic American leaders are all portrayed the same way, they blend into a sea of white men in suits – they become almost indistinguishable and could be anyone. On the morning Rolling Stone hit the news-stands, Avedon gave an interview to America’s early morning Today show. He explained that ‘The Family’ was ‘in a sense a Rorschach test… they’re seen in very different ways by different people, according to the way they feel about the subject’ (Lucy Davies, ‘Is This What Power Looks Like?,’ The Telegraph, 12 February 2016).
Not surprisingly, people of color and women make up a very small percentage of the group - a large majority of the 69 people portrayed are white, elderly, and male. In many ways, this represented what politics and to a larger degree, American business, physically looked like in the late 1970s. The use of ‘The Family’ as a title came from a suggestion made by the editor of the portfolio, Vanessa Adler: ‘We both knew immediately it was right. First of all to characterize the country [the U. S. A.] and secondly because of its ambiguity’ (Vanessa Adler, email message to Paul Roth, May 24, 2008, as noted in About Face, p. 101). Later in 1976, his work for Rolling Stone won the National Magazine Award for Visual Excellence.
The portfolio offered here is one in a limited edition of 25 and contains the complete set of 69 photographs. Other complete sets are in various institutional and private collects
ions including: the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Walther collects
ion, Neu-Ulm; The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D. C.; and the Hasselblad Center collects
ion, Göteborg, Sweden.