During his service, he was tasked with making the standard-issue identification photographs for the seamen, taking tens of thousands of pictures. Judy Garland at the Palace Theater, New York City by Richard Avedon, 1951īorn in New York in 1923, Avedon began his photography career in 1942 as a member of the U.S. “He really is pushing on the boundaries of what portraiture looks like and thinking about how to get beneath the surface-how a portrait reveals a psychological state, an emotional state, a physical state.” The photographer injected a bit of himself in many of the images, Perich points out, arranging the lighting so that in his subject’s pupils, a viewer can see the faint reflection of Avedon himself. “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.

Avedon Advertising by Richard Avedon