Comments on: Avedon, Kander, and Platon Walk into a Bar

By: Learning to See - Avedon’s Heir & Polaroid’s Legacy Up for Sale

Learning to See - Avedon’s Heir & Polaroid’s Legacy Up for Sale — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:50:32 +0000

[...] think The Promise and Platon’s other recent series (Service and First Dance) establish him as a true heir to Avedon’s Portraits of [...]

By: Jon Roemer

Jon Roemer — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:02:34 +0000

“Online, though, the portraits have a more cohesive power… Not sure why. Maybe because the scale is reduced a bit on my laptop. The pictures don’t have to do so much work on a cpu screen as they do on a big magazine page.”
Yes, but, if the goal of the project is to use the images in the magazine…
I agree and disagree with you. There are some very nice images in there but there are also many duds. I think the series would have benefited from a tighter edit (look to the Platon series an example of less being more) but then you get into political considerations (e.g. if a cabinet level portrait is not up to snuff can you edit it out?) and the commitment the magazine made to project.
From an aesthetic point of view I wonder if less flat lighting and in some cases less white space would have helped the images. Many of the Avedon images against white work because the white doesn’t over power the subject. There is just enough to highlight the graphic quality of the pose and not so much that a subtle expression or gesture gets lost.
The letters to the editor after Obama’s People ran were interesting. Some loved the series but some saw it as a missed opportunity.

By: Christopher Ming Ryan

Christopher Ming Ryan — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:50:27 +0000

After reading your post, I thought I would revisit the Kander pictures. I also felt like you did that as a group the concept went awry somewhere.
Online, though, the portraits have a more cohesive power:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/2009-inauguration-gallery/index.html
Not sure why. Maybe because the scale is reduced a bit on my laptop.
The pictures don’t have to do so much work on a cpu screen as they do on a big magazine page.
Still not all of them work. Jackie Norris and Nancy Pelosi get a big zero. But look at the confidence of Susan Rice. The coolness of Reggie Love. The niceness of Tom Dashchle (OK, he doesn’t pay his taxes – nobody’s perfect). As a group these pictures say: here is a diverse, smart, young,old, confident group of men and women that will help us get out the mess that was made….