The Family????

This well known photograph of James Jesus Angleton was taken by Richard Avedon. Sothebys.com had (or has) Richard Avedon's collection from 1923 to 2004 titled "The Family" up for auction.

Auction Closed

May 1, 07:36 PM EDT

Estimate

180,000 - 220,000 USD

The Richard Avedon Foundation

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, 2008

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Avedon’s innate sympathies lay with liberal politics; in 1963 he had photographed the Civil Rights Movement in the South; in 1969, the Anti-War Movement across the whole of America. With 'The Family', however, the photographer tried to avoid expressing any opinion about his sitters, preferring to let them pose themselves in an attempt to avoid any implicit bias in the composition of his shots. He stood a fixed distance from each subject and posed them against a stark white background, black negative edges showing, with uniform lighting. He removed all accessories, insignia, and historical paintings, thereby rendering the sitters completely politically neutral. The effect is reminiscent of identification cards, collector materials such as baseball cards, or even mugshots. As a result, these strong and charismatic American leaders are all portrayed the same way, they blend into a sea of white men in suits – they become almost indistinguishable and could be anyone. On the morning Rolling Stone hit the news-stands, Avedon gave an interview to America’s early morning Today show. He explained that ‘The Family’ was ‘in a sense a Rorschach test… they’re seen in very different ways by different people, according to the way they feel about the subject’ (Lucy Davies, ‘Is This What Power Looks Like?,’ The Telegraph, 12 February 2016).

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The portfolio offered here is one in a limited edition of 25 and contains the complete set of 69 photographs. Other complete sets are in various institutional and private collections including: the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm; The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D. C.; and the Hasselblad Center Collection, Göteborg, Sweden.

Sauce: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2023/pier-24-photography-from-the-pilara-family-foundation-sold-to-benefit-charitable-organizations-evening-sale/the-family/

signing off, need some sleep