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Richard Avedon disliked the aging process – and yet he lived within it, found humor in it, viewed it piteously and, above all else, with resignation. “I’m an old-timer,” he often remarked when still a youngish man as a senior. During his artistic journey, he created countless photographs of aging's effects upon people's faces, and of its inevitability. For a man initially, and perhaps in popular thought even now, best known for images of youth and beauty, energy and happiness – the girl swirling her skirt, jumping across water, engaging in pinball in the City of Light after dark – an equal portion exists of his body of work devoted to the elderly, experienced, and sagacious.

The Intricacy in Human Nature

His friends often noted that Avedon seemed the most vibrant figure there – yet he had no desire to be seen as the most juvenile. That represented, even if not directly hurtful, a banality: what Dick wanted was to stand as the most multifaceted figure there. He cherished mixed emotions and paradox inside a solitary portrait, or subject, rather than a grouping at either end of the emotional spectrum. He loved images like the famous Leonardo da Vinci that juxtaposes the outline of an attractive adolescent with a senior with a pronounced chin. And so, in a beautiful pairing of portraits of movie directors, at first we may see the combative Ford pitted against the benevolent Jean Renoir. The director's twisted smirk and ostentatious, angry eye patch – an eye patch is angry in its persistence on making you aware of the missing eye – viewed alongside the kind, philosophical look by Renoir, who at first glance similar to an enlightened Gallic artistic figure comparable to the painter Georges Braque.

However, observe more closely, and both Ford and Renoir display both aggression and kindness, the fighter's twist of their mouths contrasting with the light in their gaze, and Renoir’s asymmetrical gaze is just as strategic as it is virtuous. The American director could be intimidating us (with an American attitude), yet Renoir is assessing us. The simple, opposing stereotypes about humanistic ideals are betrayed or deepened: men do not become movie directors by geniality alone. Aspiration, skill and purpose are equally represented.

A War Opposing Conventions

Avedon fought with the cliches of portraiture, encompassing aging tropes, and anything that seemed only morally superior or too picturesque displeased him. Opposition drove his artistic process. At times, it proved hard for his sitters to believe that he didn't intend to diminish them or revealing their flaws when he told them that he held in esteem their hidden aspects just like what they proudly showed. This was a key factor Avedon found it difficult, and never entirely succeeded, in confronting his personal process of growing old – either making himself look too angry in a manner that didn't suit him, or on the other hand too stern in a way that was too self-enclosed, possibly since the crucial opposition in his personal nature was just as hidden from him as his subjects’ were to them. The sorcerer could perform spells with other people but not for himself.

The true paradox in his character – contrasting the earnest and severe scholar of human achievement that he represented and the ambitious, intensely competitive presence inside the New York scene he was often accused of being – remained hidden from him, similar to how we miss our own oppositions. A documentary made near the end of his life depicted him dreamily strolling the cliffs of Montauk outside his house, deep in contemplation – a location he actually never visited, remaining inside communicating via phone with associates, counseling, soothing, strategising, enjoying.

Authentic Foci

The senior figures who knew how of being dual-natured – or even more things than that – were his true subjects, and his gift for managing to communicate their multiple identities in a highly concentrated and seemingly laconic solitary photograph remains breathtaking, exceptional in the annals of photographic portraiture. His peak performance often occurs with the worst: the bigoted Ezra Pound screams with existential agony, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor become a frightened anxious duo reminiscent of Beckett characters. Even individuals he held in high regard were enhanced by his vision for their imbalances: Stravinsky gazes toward us with a direct look that appears almost pained and strategic, simultaneously a ill-tempered genius and a person with ambition and planning, a genius and a rug merchant.

WH Auden is a druid and oracle, countenance showing concern, and a quiet comic out for an awkward flat-footed walk, a traveler in downtown New York with house shoes on in the snow. (“I awakened to snowfall, and I desired to photograph Auden in it Dick explained once, and he called the probably puzzled but compliant writer and sought permission to capture his image.) His photograph of his longtime companion the writer Capote depicts him as far more intelligent than he let on and darker than he confessed. When it came to the elderly Dorothy Parker, Avedon did not admire her spirit less for her face becoming less “beautiful”, and, truthfully documenting her decline, he italicised her courage.

Lesser-Known Photographs

One portrait that I had long overlooked is that of Harold Arlen, the celebrated music writer who combined blues music with jazz to theatrical music. He belonged to a group of individuals {whom Avedon understood unconditionally|that A