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U.S. Presidents Dwight D.Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter; spiritual leaders, from the DalaiLama to the Reverend Billy Graham; and physicist Robert Oppenheimer, known asthe "father of the atomic bomb," are among the photographs in "RichardAvedon: Portraits of Power."
"Avedon always in his work wanted to get at somethingtrue and essential about the person that he was photographing," says Paul Roth,senior curator of photography at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, who organized theexhibit.
Avedon did that by taking his subjects out oftheir milieu. Nearly all of them werephotographed against a plain, white background.
"He felt that in doing so he brought theviewer's complete attention to the person's face, the person's body, theclothes they wore, the way their hair was combed," says Roth. "When he made his photographs I think he wastrying to penetrate the different masks people wear in order to exercise theirpower."
Avedon's earliest portraits were oftencreative people? like singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, soprano Marian Anderson andmovie director and actor Charlie Chaplin.
Sometimes the portraits were assignments from magazines like, , or . But Roth says Avedon's fame and success,which came early in his career, gave him the freedom to choose his ownsubjects.
American Civil Rights Leader Julian Bond, whocurrently chairs the was photographed byAvedon three times. The first time was1963, when Bond was 23. He wasphotographed in Atlanta, with other founders of the .
"We knew him primarily as a fashionphotographer, and that a fashion photographer would take the time to photographus, who were not a fashionable people -- we were impressed by that," Bondrecalls.
Photographing the unfashionable
Increasingly, Avedon chose to photograph theunfashionable, documenting not only the civil rights movement, but also theAmerican anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. In 1976, he photographed 69 of the most powerful Americans for aphoto essay in called "The Family."
"He spent several months travelingaround the United States photographing a cross section of the power elite: people in government, in unions, in media,in law, people he felt represented power," says Roth.
Four years ago, during the last presidentialcampaign, he launched a similar project called "Democracy" for magazine. He photographeddelegates at both political conventions, activists like filmmaker Michael Mooreand actor Sean Penn, politicians such as Karl Rove? and a young man who wasrunning for Senate, Barack Obama.
Obama makes an impression
"He saw the keynote address at theDemocratic convention given by Barack Obama," Roth says. "He felt it was clear that one day Obamawould run for the presidency and perhaps win, so he made the decision then, atthe very end of his portfolio, that the final image would be of Obama."
In fact, Obama's portrait is among the lastphotographs Richard Avedon took. Hedied of a brain hemorrhage on October 1, 2004, before completing the"Democracy" project. "The New Yorker"published the photos posthumously, putting Barack Obama's portrait last, justas Avedon would have wished. It is alsoamong the final photos in the exhibit at the Corcoran.