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Richard Avedon loathed the aging process – and yet he navigated it, laughed about it, viewed it piteously and, above all else, fatalistically. “I’m an old-timer,” he would say while relatively young in his 60s. During his artistic journey, he made innumerable images of the consequences of ageing upon people's faces, and of its inevitability. For someone originally, and perhaps in the world’s imagination to this day, most associated with photographs showcasing vitality and aesthetics, vitality and joy – a model dancing in a skirt, leaping over a puddle, enjoying arcade games late at night in Paris – a comparable amount is present of his artistic output devoted to the aged, wrinkled, and knowledgeable.

The Nuance of Character

His companions frequently remarked that Avedon seemed the most youthful individual present – yet he had no desire to hold that youthful title. It was, though not quite offensive, a banality: what Dick wanted was to stand as the most multifaceted figure there. He cherished contrasting feelings and paradox within a single image, or sitter, rather than a grouping on the extremes of feeling. He loved images comparable to the celebrated Leonardo piece that places side by side the outline of an attractive adolescent with an elderly man having a strong jaw. And so, in a striking combination of images depicting cinematic auteurs, initially it appears the combative Ford set against the benevolent Jean Renoir. Ford's sneering mouth and flamboyant, irate ocular shield – such a covering appears hostile in its insistence on ensuring you notice of the missing eye – seen against the soft, compassionate gaze from Renoir, who appears initially similar to an enlightened Gallic artistic figure akin to Georges Braque.

But look again, and the two directors display both aggression and kindness, the boxer-like snarl on their faces contrasting with the warmth in their look, and the director's unbalanced observation is as calculating as it is benevolent. Ford may be staring us down (with an American attitude), yet Renoir is assessing us. The easy complementary cliches about humanistic ideals are either contradicted or enhanced: men do not become movie directors by kindness exclusively. Drive, craft and determination are equally represented.

A Battle Opposing Conventions

Avedon was at war with the cliches of portraiture, including the cliches of ageing, and all that felt either merely pious or overly idealized offended him. Contradiction was the engine of his art. At times, it proved hard for those he photographed to trust that he was not belittling them or revealing their flaws when he expressed to them that he appreciated what they concealed as much as what they were proud to display. This was one reason Avedon struggled, and never entirely succeeded, in confronting his own aging persona – sometimes portraying himself as overly furious in a way that was entirely uncharacteristic, or else too firm in an approach that was too introverted, possibly since the essential paradox in his own character remained unseen by him as his subjects’ were to them. The magician could work magic with other people but not for himself.

The real contradiction in his nature – from the solemn and strict scholar of human achievement he was and the driven, hypercompetitive force inside the New York scene people often labeled him – was not apparent to him, just as our own paradoxes escape us. A film from his later years depicted him dreamily strolling the Montauk cliffs outside his house, lost in thought – a spot he truly didn't frequent, being inside talking on the phone to companions, advising, comforting, devising strategies, delighting.

True Subjects

The elderly individuals who understood how of being dual-natured – or even more things than that – served as his genuine subjects, and his talent for managing to communicate their varied personas in a radically compressed and outwardly concise one picture remains breathtaking, unique in the history of portraiture. He is often at his best with the most challenging subjects: the bigoted Ezra Pound screams with existential agony, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor transform into a terrified wide-eyed Beckett couple. Even the people he admired were complimented by his eye for their inconsistencies: The composer stares at the viewer with an even stare that is almost stricken and calculating, both a man of surly genius and a man of calculation and ambition, a genius and a rug merchant.

WH Auden is a druid and oracle, visage marked by worry, and a silent comedian on an ungainly walk, a traveler in downtown New York wearing slippers in snowy conditions. (“I woke up and it was snowing, and I wished to capture Auden amidst it,” Avedon once described, and he called the probably puzzled but compliant writer and sought permission to capture his image.) His portrait of his old friend the author Truman Capote depicts him as considerably brighter than he pretended to be and more malicious than he acknowledged. When it came to the elderly Dorothy Parker, He continued to value her essence because her appearance grew less attractive, and, truthfully documenting her decline, he emphasized her bravery.

Neglected Images

One portrait that I had long overlooked is that of Harold Arlen, the celebrated music writer who married blues and jazz to theatrical music. He was among a category of artists {whom Avedon understood unconditionally|that A