The Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson revisits Richard Avedon’s “In The American West” with an exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of this iconic photo book (until October 12, 2025). Although several of the images from this series such as “Texas Rattlesnake Skinner” are extremely well known, what makes this a not-to-miss exhibition is that it includes the entire series of images featured in the original publication.
The exhibition includes a full selection of engravers prints, which served as reference materials for both the exhibition and the 1985 book, as well as previously unpublished documents, such as preparatory Polaroids, test prints annotated by the photographer and correspondence between the artist and some of his models.
Between 1979 and 1984 (commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas,) Avedon traveled across the American West photographing over a thousand people portraying the working class including butchers, coal miners, factory workers… and twelve year old Sandra Bennett of Rocky Ford, Colorado, who appears on the book’s cover. All are photographed with precisionist detail, using a large format camera and plain white backdrop characteristic of his mature style.
Despite their apparent minimalism and objectivism, however, Avedon emphasized that these portraits were not to be regarded as simple records of people; rather, he said, “the moment an emotion or a fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.”
Richard Avedon, “In the American West” at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, to 12 October, 2025,