Over the course of a most outstanding career, Richard Avedon successfully and meticulously crafted two bodies of work—fashion and portraiture—each distinctly impressive in its own right, each unequivocally Avedon’s. From the inception of his career, first at Harper’s Bazaar and later at Vogue, Avedon challenged the norms for editorial photography. His fashion work gained recognition for its seemingly effortless energy and bursting energy, while his portraits were celebrated for their succinct eloquence. “I am always stimulated by people,” Avedon has said, “almost never by ideas.” Indeed, as seen in his portraits—be it of famed movie stars or everyday people—for Avedon the challenge was conveying the essence of his subjects. The current lot, depicting the greatest power players in American politics during the 1970s, is an embodiment of Avedon’s approach.

The Family was originally commissioned by Rolling Stone in 1976 on the occasion of America’s Bicentennial celebration and in advance of the presidential election. Comprised of sixty-nine prints depicting a diverse cross-sectional overview of the American political milieu, The Family cleverly hints at the interconnected nature of the seemingly disparate professions represented—from President Gerald Ford to the founder of the United Farm Workers Union, Cesar Chavez. Indeed, it is noteworthy that not all of Avedon’s sitters were publically elected officials. In fact, among the sitters were bankers, media trendsetters, corporate executives, publishers, union leaders, and others, alluding to the confluence of forces that contribute to the shaping of the highest office in America.

In keeping with his saying that “All photographs are accurate, none of them is the truth,” Avedon was not concerned with capturing the likeness of his sitters. “The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion,” Avedon has stated. All subjects were photographed against a stark, white background that stripped them of their expected context and associated insignia (oak desks, brass name plaques, paintings of past presidents, to name but a few.) “In a way,” Avedon later commented, “these pictures were almost taken by the people in the pictures. I didn't tell them what to wear. I didn't tell them how to pose. However they presented themselves, I recorded with very little manipulation.” By doing so, nuances in facial expression, posture and dress prominently rise to viewers’ awareness, gently hinting at the sitters’ underlying personalities and idiosyncrasies. Indeed, across the dozens of portraits, viewers are met with a myriad of expressions, from furrowed looks of consternation to gentle grins and broad smiles; an array of poses that range from stiff and self-contained to fluid and insouciant; and a diverse manner in dress, from jeweled haute couture to a soft-collared farmer’s shirt. The longer viewers spend studying the portraits, the more the sitters’ public personas morph into intimate characters, revealing Avedon’s gift in gradually and cleverly peeling the public façade of his sitters.

In the nearly four decades that have lapsed since The Family was originally created, many of the sitters’ careers would greatly shift. None more so, perhaps, than Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and George Bush, all of whom would go on to be elected into the American presidency. Avedon’s iconic The Family, like a personal family album, stands at a meeting point between past and future, astutely recording the moments that had come to define an era, and offering a wise nod at the many more that were to define the ensuing decades in American politics.

Another complete portfolio is in the permanent collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.