Rick Davis, Drifter, Interstate 94, Buffalo, North Dakota, July 13, 1982

From 1979 to 1984, Richard Avedon (1923-2004) traveled cross-country to 189 towns in 17 states to create his iconic series In the American West. Commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum, Avedon traveled across the western United States, photographing ordinary people – miners, drifters, oil field workers, ranchers, among others – against a stark white backdrop. The result was a striking body of work that challenged traditional, romanticized depictions of the ‘Wild West,’ replacing them with deeply humanized portraits of adversity, resilience, and survival.

Unlike traditional documentary photography, which often seeks to capture subjects in their natural environments, Avedon’s approach was deeply intimate. By isolating his subjects against an identical neutral background, he stripped away any context, forcing viewers to engage with the body language of each individual. This technique heightened the emotional intensity of the series, creating a very different aesthetic to his typical glamorous, classic Hollywood style.

“I’m looking for a new definition of a photographic portrait…I’m looking for people who are surprisingly — heartbreaking — or beautiful in a terrifying way. Beauty that might scare you to death until you acknowledge it as a part of yourself” (Avedon as quoted in Avedon at Work: In the American West, 2003, p. 17).

Measuring up to four feet tall, Avedon brought his subjects out of the shadows and into a life-size presence and scale. It is significant that so many people unaffectedly submitted themselves to Avedon’s lens without the customary performance of a smile, or the instinctive readjustment of posture. His intentions were invariably motivated by a profound interest in interpreting human behavior, whether it was that of a movie star or cotton farmer.

An important image from the series, the present lot was exhibited by Gagosian at Frieze Masters, 2012. Though Avedon had a methodical selection process for his sitters, chance often played a role. This image of drifter Rick Davis is a perfect example of this as Avedon likely came across Davis not at a planned location, but en route to one, demonstrating Avedon’s amazingly dynamic approach to portraiture.