Richard Avedon put a Dior evening gown between two elephants in Paris in 1955. More than two decades later, he photographed a 13-year-old boy in Sweetwater, Texas, holding a rattlesnake. The model, Dovima, was at a circus. The boy, Boyd Fortin, was one of hundreds of people Avedon photographed for In the American West. In the fashion photograph the setting helps make the picture. In the Texas portrait a white backdrop takes the setting away.
Those two assignments offer a way into Avedon, Ron Howard's documentary about the American photographer. It screened at Cannes in May and arrives on Netflix Nov. 11. The service lists it at one hour and 44 minutes, rated R. Howard's film draws on Avedon's archive and interviews with people who worked with him. Howard told Vanity Fair that he originally expected to focus more on fashion and celebrity, then found himself drawn to the work Avedon did outside those circles.
A Dior gown at the circus
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection record places Dovima with Elephants at the Cirque d'Hiver in August 1955. Dovima's arms extend toward the elephants on either side of her. Her dark dress and pale sash make a clear shape against the folds of the animals' skin. The pose depends on that setting: the model and the elephants are close enough to seem part of the same arrangement, though they carry their weight in very different ways.
The photograph has circulated in prints of different sizes. The Met's example measures about 50 by 40 inches and was printed in 1981, long after the sitting. MoMA's collection records an example shown in a 1958 exhibition. The dates are a reminder that a fashion assignment could have a second life on a museum wall. They also matter when looking at an Avedon print: the year in the title can date the negative even when the object in the collection was made later.
What he left outside the frame in the West
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth commissioned the Western project in 1979. The museum's collection notes record 752 sittings and some 17,000 sheets of film exposed with a large-format camera. Avedon traveled through 17 states. Laura Wilson accompanied him, helped arrange sittings and took photographs of the project as it happened. Avedon's selection opened at the Carter in 1985, when the book In the American West was also published.
The museum's catalog identifies people with the particulars Avedon kept even when he took the landscape out of the picture. Fortin's entry gives his age, town and sitting date. Clyde Corley is identified as a rancher photographed in Belgrade, Montana. Joe Dobosz is a uranium miner photographed in Church Rock, New Mexico. That information survives beside the pictures. The white background leaves the viewer to look at the person and what they brought into the frame, without a mine or ranch supplying the rest of the story.
The exhibition's choices were contested at the time. The Carter's account of the reception notes that critics saw a bleak picture of the region. The museum also describes the project as Avedon's own interpretation of the West. Those are related points. Hundreds of sittings gave him a wide field to choose from, and the pictures on the walls represented his selections. The result could tell readers a great deal about the people he chose to show and how he chose to photograph them, while leaving other versions of the region outside the exhibition.
How Howard approached the documentary
The Western commission was one of several projects in which Avedon turned his camera on American public life. The State Department's Art in Embassies profile traces that thread to Nothing Personal, his 1964 book, which included portraits of people on opposing sides of the civil rights debate. In 2004 he returned to political portraiture for The New Yorker. The magazine published the unfinished project, Democracy, shortly before that year's election.
Howard told Cannes he organized the film around shifts in the way Avedon worked and the subjects he chose. In his Vanity Fair interview, he brought up a photograph of a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar holding a basketball in a New York playground. Howard pointed out that it uses an actual setting, an example of the photographer moving between methods rather than applying the white backdrop to every portrait. The difference is visible when set against the Western work. A playground locates Abdul-Jabbar in a particular place, while Fortin's location is carried by the title and the details of the portrait.
The festival screening came months before the Netflix release. Screen Daily's Cannes review reported that Howard makes extensive use of interviews in which Avedon discusses his process and personal life. For a closer look at the still photographs before or after the film, the Met and the Carter have online records for the circus picture and the Western portraits. The Carter also keeps its 2025 exhibition page online with examples of Wilson's behind-the-scenes work from the commission.
