Richard Avedon

In Berlin, over New Year's I went to the Martin Gropius Bauhaus to view a photography exhibition by Richard Avedon, an American photographer. His works celebrated the lives of the famous and the ordinary. You see Marilyn Monroe's captured at her vulnerable moments, Tennesse Williams (whose face I never remembered), Samuel Beckett (one of my favourite playwrights), icons like Hepburn and so on and then you walked on and you see commoners whose lives you don't know (just like the above) being photographed in their grime and dirt. I find this section very fascinating, and kept walking through it. Mostly, I felt uncomfortable looking at these faces, yet at certain moments, there's something tranquil just merely observing. In these potraits he took around the States, his use (or the lack of) of lighting was definitely an interesting idea. His stark potrayal of these potraits simply made it very real, at least for me. It sure made my walk in freezing cold and getting lost while looking for the musuem all the more worthwhile.