Richard Avedon reveals the deep America in Cartier-Bresson

In the Marais, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation is exhibiting the entire collection of Richard Avedon's legendary "In the American West" from April 30 to October 12, 2025.

Forty years after the publication of the book of the same name, it is still a visual and social shock: 103 portraits, all on a white background, all with a disarming frontality, draw up a human map of the forgotten American West.

Waitresses, fairground workers, pastors, miners, factory workers, stay-at-home mothers, beekeepers, prisoners, armed children, teenagers, homeless people, and ranchers: Richard Avedon parades the invisible, the battered, the workers, the dreamers, all captured in their raw dignity, far from the gilded myths of triumphant America.

Between 1979 and 1984, the fashion photographer, as well as those who photographed reports and portraits of models and celebrities (Marylin Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, The Beatles, Sophia Loren, etc.), left the studios for the dust of the roads.

He sets out to meet those whom the America of Ronald Reagan (at the time) and Donald Trump (today) prefers to ignore. For five years, alongside his work for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Life magazine, he photographed more than a thousand anonymous people, retaining only one hundred and three: piercing gazes, suspended gestures, silent stories. 

His style? A radical stripping away: natural light, a roll of white paper as a backdrop behind his models, nothing but the presence, the flaw, the strength of each face, in black and white. Here, there's no folklore, but a naked, subjective, assumed truth. He affirms: "I'm looking for a new definition of a photographic portrait. I look for people who are surprising, heartbreaking, or beautiful in a terrifying way. A beauty that might scare you until you recognize it as part of yourself."

At the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, the exhibition invites visitors to delve into this gallery of real America, that of the margins and of resistance. An exhibition not to be missed for anyone who wants to understand the power of the portrait, the force of the gaze, and the art of Avedon (1923-2004), who transformed social photography into an aesthetic and political manifesto. A major event for the Marais and for Paris, a must-see.

From April 30 to October 12, 2025