THE PORTRAIT

-RICHARD AVEDON
Self-Portrait 1964


  In chapter 6 of 'The Photograph' Graham Clarke writes about how Richard Avedon remodelled his work from traditionally being directed towards 'formal' portraiture and fashion work to styling his imagery more about challenging ideas of how individuals can be photographed. Avedon's portrait series which documented characters from the Western USA are taken against a high-key style white background. Clarke suggests this "gives off an atmosphere of loss and displacement", but then questions whether this was Avedon's original intent. Still preserving it's obsessive ambiguity, his work suggests the fading stage of the formal portrait. His 1964 self-portrait presents himself in a photo-booth displaying half of his face through a mask of James Baldwin, the black American writer. His reasoning behind this, and the contributing factors are deep and intense. However, the visual of the image portrays a insight into the actual overall aspect of the portrait in relation to photography. 


  The viewer is now not currently looking into the subject within the image but now the processes that are suggested in creating the image and as Clarke says, the "ever-changing condition" and how the photographer works this out. This photograph becomes significant in that it enquires its confinements of reference; it could be said that the photographic portrait redefines portraiture for itself rather than to that of the painted portrait, boldly relating itself to the 20th century, whilst still choosing to use its incongruity as a decision of representation.