Richard Avedon’s celebrated series “In the American West” began in Texas, as a commission from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth to photograph ordinary people in his signature style. From 1979 to 1984 Avedon made portraits of ranch hands and truck stop waitresses, slaughterhouse workers and miners, in more than 700 sittings across 15 states, shooting with his 8×10 Deardorff. The Amon Carter Museum showed the images in a major exhibition in 1985, and they were collected in a popular book. A selection of 17 images from the series, all made in Texas, are now back on view at the Amon Carter Museum in a show that runs until July 2. Among them are six images Avedon made at the Rattlesnake Round-Up in Sweetwater, Texas, at the start of the commission, which, in their direct exchange of appraisal and connection, set the tone for the project that followed.
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To my opinion some of his greatest work and very worth vile, to any photographer to study for the strong impression in the images to the simplistic but effective lighting scheme.