Avedon Political Portraits -- Oct. 24, 2004
-- A weekly feature on This Week.
Just before he died earlier this month, premier American photographer Richard Avedon was shooting an election year project called "Democracy." The portraits will appear in this week's edition of the "The New Yorker," which hits newsstands on Monday. The magazine's editor, David Remnick, gave "This Week" a preview.
David Remnick: "Avedon had been known for portraits and fashion photography for many years, but he had also done a lot of political photography over time. And he saw this election season as incredibly contentious and momentous and historic, and he wanted to capture some of it. If you look at the portrait, for example of Karl Rove, I think you see a slyness that both Rove wanted to project and that Avedon was very happy to capture.
"There's a few cartoonish figures in here. Somebody dresses up as Abe Lincoln, or somebody wearing an elephant hat or a donkey hat or something like that. He knew very well that even at political conventions, this cartoonishness of American political life was dying out. You see people who were involved in abortion rights, or gun rights, or any number of issues, or politicians that devoted their entire lives to one cause or another. The intensity of the political American process that we're feeling right now is captured in these photographs.
"Richard Avedon was not interested in the portrait that was pretty or cosmetic. He wanted to capture the face that people choose to present to the world in all its pain or plainness or joy or whatever. The photograph of Carter is of a kind of saintly presence, not because Jimmy Carter was a saint all his life but because in his retirement, he has that aura in a way that certain ex-presidents, living and dead, did not and do not.
"What you have here in Democracy 2004 is not a collection of very obvious faces; you have people from all over the scale of the democratic process. Here is a far different America, a far different angle of vision, a far different level of participation. It's not the power of elite; it is the power of participation from various levels of society."
Late Night with Conan O'Brien:
O'Brien: "We sent [Triumph the Insult Comic Dog] to the third presidential debate, and afterwards -- I honestly don't know how we managed this -- Triumph was able to get backstage into the area known as 'spin alley.' Here is his report."
Paul Begala: "No, I thought Kerry did quite well."
Triumph: "He did quite well?"
Begala: "Because he actually talked about issues that middleclass people care about."
Triumph: "Right."
Begala: "He talked about health care, he talked about minimum wage, he talked about social security…"
Triumph: "Come on! For Kerry, middleclass is Oprah Winfrey." …
Triumph: "Oh, it's Karl Rove, it's the brains! You're Bush's brains, Karl! I was expecting a much smaller man."
