In 1964, Richard Avedon, at the time the world’s most famous
fashion photographer, and James Baldwin, a leading literary voice
in the black struggle in America, col laborated on a searing
portrait book, Nothing Personal. This controversial classic from
the heart of the American civil rights movement explores the
contradictions and extremities at the heart of the American
experience, and is especially timely in the age of Donald Trump.
Avedon’s subjects range from intellectuals, politicians, a former
slave, newlyweds, preacher Billy Graham, pop singers, and civil
rights activists, shot in his signature formal and graphic black
and white, often tightly cropped. The collection is all the more
poignant through its bold and deliberate juxtaposition of specific
images, such as Jewish gay poet /Vilen Ginsberg placed opposite the
American Nazi Party. Avedon’s work with mental asylum patients,
shot in a grainy documentary style, is equally harrowing, although
he chooses to end Nothing Personal on a hopeful, positive note,
with images of children and parents reveling in the Californian
ocean. The photographs are complemented by Baldwin's four-part
polemic: a critique of a society that he feels is unjust,
alienating, divisive, ancf therefore in the midst of an existential
crisis. In a highly personal and pertinent testimony, Baldwin
openly writes about his own experience of harassment by a racist
policeman on the streets of New York. Designed by Marvin Israel,
Nothing Personal is also an art-directed triumph from the Mad Men
era. An “oversized” book in its own white slipcase, the minimal
and striking placement of images and text alike revolutionized the
packaging of photography books. This is a meticulous reprint of the
original, which has long been out of print, produced in close
collaboration with the Richard Avedon Foundation. A 72-page
accompanying booklet features never-before-seen outtakes, contact
sheets, portraits of the authors at work, preliminary layouts,
correspondence, ephemera, and an essay by Baldwin expert and
Pulitzer Prize winner Hilton Als. Als traces the making of Nothing
Personal and documents the personal and creative relationship
between Avedon and Baldwin, who were high school friends in the
1940s. Als also movingly reflects on how Nothing Personal impacted
his own life, as well as his friendship with Avedon. When
published, Nothing Personals dark, disturbing vision of America
inevitably divided critics, and Avedon in particular endured harsh
criticism. Some felt that a fashion photographer had no place in
dabbling in social commentary, while others found his book to be an
elitist statement by New York liberals, unrepresentative of the
true feelings of “real” Americans. Sound familiar?
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