Well, we went to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, and saw the Avedon exhibit of his wonderful portraits of the West. In addition, to the Avedon photos, there was a room devoted to contemporary Bay Area Art. There was a very lifelike statue of a man in the room, in fact so lifelike, I was hesitant to stare, for fear it could actually be a gallery worker. The piece reminded me of Ron Mueck's stuff, which I've only seen on TV and the web. It was strange, on the other end of the room, there was a man sitting in a chair, playing with his digital camera. Perhaps working on a slide show. He was apparantly flipping back and forth between images of the sky. He was real, but he could very well be a work of art. I took a quick photo, which I've attached. It was the only one I took today.
Now, getting back to Avedon. I stopped at the book store on the way out, and started to read a book which documented the process behind Avedon's portraits of the west. It was titled, "Avedon at Work: In the American West". There are few books of this sort, which talk of an artist's process in detail. In fact, the author makes the point, that the camera is not often turned on a photographer while he works. The author also reveals much about Avedon's personality, and how he interacts with potential and actual subjects. Anyways, hopefully it'll help me pursue some of my ideas involving the photography of real people.
