![]() ![]() “Avedon is not interested in flattery,” says Shannon Thomas Perich, curator of the museum’s photographic history collection. The photographs are printed in a stark graphic black-and-white style and mounted on a black backing board, emphasizing the substance of the subjects. ![]() In the new exhibition “ (Re)Framing Conversations: Photographs by Richard Avedon, 1946-1965,” now on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, visitors can view 20 of the iconic photographer’s portraits of some of the most luminous personalities of our times-Judy Garland, Bob Dylan, Billy Graham, Malcolm X, Dorothy Parker and Charlie Chaplin, to name a few. The photographic works of Richard Avedon, featured in those magazines, stood out for their searing intimacy and for bringing readers face to face with celebrities, models, heroes, murderers, athletes, politicians, activists, musicians, writers and everyday Americans. Photographs were a focal point in those mid-20th-century publications, informing and illustrating, conveying symbolism and sometimes racism, sexism and classism. ![]() Long before the advent of social media and before there was a television in every home, Americans learned about the world in the pages of magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post. ![]()
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