Nothing Personal

Nothing personal is Avedon’s second book where he collaborated with James Baldwin who wrote the text that accompanied Avedon’s pictures.

James Baldwin and Avedon had known each other since High School where they both where editors for the school magazine. It is funny to think that two friends from high school both became famous artists, one in photography and the other in literature.

The book has been largely criticized because people find the photographs cruel. Richard Lacayo (2004) argued that the style of his portraits consisted of a white background where the subjects did not smile and where the light showed every detail of that person. He photographed all his subjects in that style but they were not cruel photographs, they were daring, down-to-earth and explicit.

I think the way the book is designed is very compelling.

 

Marilyn Monroe’s photograph has become very famous because we see a very different side of her than we usually see in her movies, on other photographs or in interviews. In The Christian Science Monitor (2002) they show perfectly how this picture’s mood was created by stating that:  

Marilyn Monroe performed - flirting, vamping, and dancing for the camera for
two hours in her self-created role as glamorous siren. But the frame Avedon
printed was snapped after she slumped, exhausted, in a chair. He transformed
her from va-va-voom into a melancholy baby.