On Art

R ICHARD AVEDON, fashion photographer and portrait-maker, will be speaking tonight at the Fogg in conjunction with his latest project In the American West (co-sponsored by the ICA Harvard's Office for the Arts, and Harvard University Art Museum). Following are excerpts from a recent interview with Mr. Avedon.

ON THE PROJECT: "It isn't about the West. It's about a photographer who went west to do Avedon portraits."

"The entire work transcends the specific subject into a sense of the way life is for all of us."

"One coal miner is not like another just because they're both covered in black. It's about contradictions, differences."

"You can look at the wall of teenagers and find all you need to know about the rest of their lives."

ON THE WHITE BACKGROUND OF THE PORTRAITS FOR IN THE AMERICAN WEST: "The tradition of background space in portraiture tended to be greys, giving a deep romantic quality, implying the sky. White is emptiness, grey is fullness. The edge of the film acts like a box--the empty, unrelenting space behind the figure is a metaphor for me."

ON PHOTOGRAPHY: "I have no interest in abstract expressionism. It's a kind of interior decoration, a kind of flower painting like the photographs of Robert Maplethorpe simplifying the complexities of sexuality--turning a penis into a lily, asses into pears."

"There's a danger in aestheticizing unnacceptable things because when you turn pain into a work of art you make it acceptable, like watching a war on television."

ON DOING THE LECTURE CIRCUIT: "Everything you do in conjunction with photography that is not making photographs diminishes one's real business. [Lecturing] is not the business of making art. I'm realistic enough to understand that and I want to do it. But it doesn't help me with the next photograph."

"It's meaningful for me to speak at Harvard. It's probably the last time I will speak publicly."