
Early in 1976, with both the post-Watergate political
atmosphere and the approaching bicentennial celebration in mind,
Rolling Stone asked Richard Avedon to cover the
presidential primaries and the campaign trail. Avedon
counter-proposed a grander idea — he had always wanted
to photograph the men and women he believed to have
constituted political, media and corporate elite of the United
States.
For the next several months, Avedon traversed the country from
migrant grape fields of California to NFL headquarters in Park
Avenue and returned with an amazing portfolio of soldiers, spooks,
potentates, and ambassadors that was too late for the bicentennial
but published in Rolling Stone’s Oct. 21, 1976, just in
time for the November elections.
Sixty-nine black-and-white portraits (seen all together in an
Met exhibit here) were in Avedon’s signature
Hasselblad style — formal, intimate, bold, and minimalistic.
Appearing in them are President Ford and his three immediate
successors — Carter, Reagan, and Bush. Other familiars of the
American polity such as Kennedys and Rockefellers are here, and as
are giants who held up the nation’s Fourth Pillar during that
challenging decade: A. M. Rosenthal of the New York
Times who decided to publish the Pentagon Papers,
and Katharine Graham who led Woodward and Bernstein at
Washington Post.
Their source, Deep Throat, is here too: W. Mark Felt, the former
associate director of the FBI, although he didn’t reveal that fact
until 2005 — the year after Avedon himself died. It is also
clear here that apart from a few civil rights leaders and eminent
wives, the pantheon of 1976 was mostly while, mostly male, mostly
besuited, and mostly elderly. Yet, some familiar contemporary names
amongst its younger members — the activist Ralph Nadar, 42; Jerry
Brown, 38, then as now the governor of California; Donald Rumsfeld,
44, then and future Secretary of Defense — also suggest this
group’s political endurance and Zeligian relevance.
Consciously or otherwise, absent were the supreme court justices
and the man whose resignation made this portfolio possible.
Instead, Avedon convinced Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods to
pose for him.
If we assemble a project like this today, what will be its
composition? There’ll definitely be more ‘celebrities’ I guess, but
weigh-in here in comments or tweet to @aalholmes.
