Richard Avedon’s In the American West (1979–1984) presents unvarnished depictions of working-class individuals across seventeen western states. Commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum of Art, this project marked a departure from Avedon’s celebrated career in fashion photography, as he sought to engage with raw human experiences beyond the polished surfaces of glamour. Inspired by his own confrontation with mortality following a heart condition, Avedon embarked on a five-year journey through county fairs, oil fields, coal mines, slaughterhouses, and roadside stops, capturing the lives of those often overlooked in traditional representations of the West.
Unlike the mythologized landscapes and heroic figures central to Western iconography, his subjects—miners, drifters, waitresses, and laborers—stand isolated against a stark white backdrop, stripped of environmental context and reduced to the essence of their physical presence. This formal approach, previously associated with commercial studio photography, here served to elevate everyday individuals to a level of visual prominence typically reserved for celebrities and models.
The choice of black-and-white photography, facilitated by an 8x10 Deardorff view camera, heightened the hyper-realism of facial expressions and bodily details, reinforcing the intensity of Avedon’s portraits. Even lighting, achieved by positioning subjects in the shade, neutralized sculptural effects, further emphasizing the stark, frontal compositions that often evoke mugshots. Through this meticulous methodology, Avedon constructed a subjective vision of the West as a place of endurance, hardship, and psychological complexity, eschewing both sentimental nostalgia and documentary objectivity.
Premiering with monumentally scaled prints at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in 1985, the project traveled widely—to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, SFMOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art, and other U.S. venues—accompanied by an Abrams monograph. It has since been revisited in anniversary and centennial installations at the Amon Carter, and prints now reside in major museum collections, reinforcing the series’ lasting influence.
