​Better late than never– here's the full video of this very special event. I'm so honored to have been invited to that hallowed stage, upon which so many inspirational luminaries of mine have trod, and to be privileged enough to share the stage with the great Tom Eykemans. That it was Elliott Bay, and not just Elliott Bay but a standing-room only, sold-out event at Elliott Bay humbles me beyond words. I know I don't deserve this. Thanks to everyone who came– and to those who tried (afterwards, I was told of someone who tried to attend and rode the 8 to get there… but true to form, the 8 was so “L8” that she missed the entire event!! Big virtual hug to whoever you are, for making the effort!).

I also wanted to use this blog space to expand upon some of my replies in the Q&A. It's hard to come up with something in the moment, in front of an audience, in a way that you feel represents your views well enough to withstand the perpetuity of internet-land. As you can see, I fumble for what to say when the estimable Ryan Packer asks his question about what the solution is for Seattle's homelessness crisis. It really is the million-dollar question of our city. My answer, upon further reflection, is a big one, though I'm reluctant to share it right this second– it involves Shawn Yim, who's on my mind after passing almost exactly a year ago. Give me more time to find the right words. (For now, click for my essay and NPR interview from the time of his death.)

I also fail to give a straight answer when answering another great question– how to reduce the distance between management and operations, a distance which is the cause of so much inefficacy and strife not just at King County Metro but pretty much every other bureaucratic or corporate space. Thankfully the solution for that question is simple, even if I couldn't come up with it on the spot: hire internally. 

Enjoy the full event below! More on the book, including many more videos and other press, here.

It isn’t just nostalgia. Or the indisputable fact that we already have the infrastructure in place. Or how quiet they are, how good they are at going up Seattle’s hills, or how they qualify for different funding streams. It’s all of that and a lot more. I know battery-electric buses are all the rage right now, because we’ve been conditioned to get excited about what is new. But sometimes oldies remain goodies.

Trolley buses remain financially competitive as a zero-emissions alternative in comparison to Battery Electric Buses (BEBs) for several reasons. I won’t regurgitate the excellent research done by others, but I will link to and summarize it so you have a solid starting point if you ever need ammunition for this argument in your work groups and meetings. 

The three best technical sources I’ve found are this July 2023 report done for MUNI (here), this UTM cost comparison of trolley vs battery infrastructure installation, and this January 2025 report done for Poland. Although there's a lot more in the above links, here are a few points that stood out to me:

• Trolley buses are more energy efficient because they don’t require overnight charging, which requires a massive electricity draw that shouldn’t be overestimated;
• A smaller spare ratio of trolleys is needed as compared with BEBs, because trolleys don’t need to dwell at the base to charge;
• Trolleys have increased energy efficiency because they use electricity only as needed while in operation;
• They’re better for the environment because their batteries are much smaller (less strip-mining for precious metals);
• They’re lighter, and thus result in less wear and tear on roads;
• Trolleys fit the federal definition of fixed-route service, a la rail, and thus qualify for funding that BEBs can’t;
• Trolley infrastructure is already proven, and in place

Our current BEB fleet bears out these observations, particularly in that they’ve historically been unreliable for use on all-day runs. There are also plenty of YouTube videos detailing why trolleys surpass battery vehicles, especially as borne out by data in the last several years.  The second half of this video is useful in breaking down some of the electrical engineering problems that may bite us in the future. 

The above points speak for themselves, from the standpoints of both fiscal and environmental responsibility. I’m totally ignoring the additional fact that driving trolleys is just plain more fun. It’s like driving a manual transmission: more challenging, sure, but also more involving, more present, and ultimately more enjoyable; like any sports or art or other craft, trolleys are a skill that feels good to finally master. They ask for more from us, and in turn reveal and concretize more of our abilities, the way playing chess is more fun than playing checkers. 

They also represent a unique asset in defining Seattle’s multimodal dimensions, those linguistically, culturally and civically multitudinous qualities which cause us to be the rare American city that feels about as European as one of our cities can be. History is not often allowed to breathe or show its face in West Coast America, but trolleys carry that  quality we feel when we cross the Atlantic or visit the Eastern seaboard, the tangible reminder that generations existed before we did, and they knew a thing or two we can still learn from. 

The challenge of living in a society focused on short-term gains instead of long-term benefits is that obviously good things are sometimes destroyed at a lasting loss to everyone. We use the term “capitalism” as shorthand for describing this problem, but the best example of this when it comes to trolley buses is Moscow, who recently dismantled their trolley network, formerly the world’s largest, in what today is almost universally recognized as a colossal mistake. The official reasons given at the time now read as obviously false (they even tried to suggest that diesel fumes would be more environmentally friendly than electrical output!), and we now know the decision had to do with lucrative contracts with BEB manufacturers, redistribution of routes among operating companies, and the erroneous assumption that they’d save electricity. Embarrassingly, the BEB and diesel replacements are now unable to efficiently heat themselves, and demand even more energy consumption than the previous system, which was tried and true since 1933. 

Meanwhile, Budapest and numerous other cities are expanding their trolley bus lines (also click here for fleet breakdown info), investing in new overhead and equipment– including, eventually, our own Seattle! These lists do not include other thriving locations, from the massive network in nearby Vancouver, B.C. to far-flung Chelyabinsk, which I’m told has a very good deputy minister of road management and transport, unusual for Russia. In the Clean Technica article linked in the bibliography below, Michael Barnard writes about Nancy as a useful counterexample to Moscow:

“Similarly, the French city of Nancy offers a cautionary and instructive tale of urban transit innovation. In 2000, Nancy replaced its traditional trolleybuses with an experimental guided-bus system called TVR, which proved unreliable and costly over two decades. After finally scrapping the TVR in 2023, Nancy returned to trolleybus technology, deploying bi-articulated IMC trolleybuses on its busiest urban corridors. This return was not nostalgic but rather pragmatic, leveraging partial re-use of existing overhead wiring while employing off-wire battery operation to maintain aesthetics in the historic city center. Early public feedback in Nancy has been strongly positive, citing improved reliability, comfort, and environmental performance.”

I know BEBs are more politically popular at the moment, but trolleys represent a more stable, proven, efficient, and fiscally responsible choice. Thankfully we don’t have to choose between one or the other, of course, but if we prioritize expanding our trolley network, I think future generations will be thanking us. 

Links & Further Reading:

Reports:

• Climate & Community Institute. The Potential of Trolleybuses: San Francisco Muni Electrification Alternatives Analysis. Summary of trolley advantages, including in-depth technical analysis. By Andrés Díez Restrepo, José Valentín Restrepo, Mauricio Restrepo Restrepo, Lina María Parra Hoyos, Matthew Haugen and Alex Lantsberg. June 2023. 
• Urban Transport Magazine. Bus Electrification: A comparison of capital costs. Detailed financial breakdown of alternate options. By Martin Wright. 2021. 
• Applied Energy by Science Direct. Electrifying the bus network with trolleybus: Analyzing the in motion charging technology. Exploration of IMC, battery cost, battery aging, and the advantage of investing in infrastructure to reduce need for batteries. By Mikołaj Bartłomiejczyk & Priscilla Caliandro. Applied Energy Volume 377, Part C, 1 January 2025.

Articles/Videos

Problems with BEBs vs Trolleys

• Alan Fisher. The Technology that makes San Francisco's Transit Superior (video). Exploration of why trolleys surpass alternate choices as the best all-around option, including problems with BEBs. Uses research from the C&C report above, among others. 2025.
• Greater Greater Washington. The DC Circulator’s electrification dilemma. Exploration of “self-inflicted budget woes” in DC transit due to BEBs. By Stephen Coleman Kenny. August 2023.

Trolley expansion internationally

• Clean Technica. Why Modern Cities Are Embracing Trolleybuses Again. Detailed breakdown of cities expanding their trolley networks, the rationale behind their choices, and with what specific fleet and overhead improvements. By Michael Barnard. 2025.
• Sustainable-Bus.com. Trolleybus: A growing demand thanks to zero emission operations. Details on trolley bus investments/expansions in Switzerland, France, Austria, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Mexico City, and elsewhere. By SB staff. July 2024.
• Urban Transport Magazine. Moscow: The end of what was once the world’s largest trolleybus operation. Breakdown of what happened, with photographs. By UTM staff. September 2020.
• Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde. Unobvious reasons for trolleybus demolition in Moscow. Observations on what likely took place behind closed doors. By Egor Muleev. January 2021.
• Bus-News. Budapest to Construct New Trolleybus Lines in Józsefváros and Kőbánya. New trolley routes in Budapest! By Tiana May. September 2025.
• Travel and Tour World. Explore More of Budapest: New Trolleybus Routes Enhance Access to Cultural and Historical Sites. How Budapest’s newest trolley expansion will positively impact tourist travel within the city.
• The Urbanist. Metro Plans Trolleybus Investments, with Long Implementation Timelines. Current timeline of trolley infrastructure expansions in Seattle. By Ryan Packer. October 2025. 
• Federal Transit Administration. Fixed Guideway Modernization (5309 (b)(2)). Just for the record: Federal policy confirming trolley bus as qualifying for fixed-route funding. 2016.

Just nerding out:

• I Don't Know What a Trolley is, Part I & I Don't Know What a Trolley is, Part II: Wondering what a trolley bus is exactly, or how it works? Check out these two essays by me, which have plenty of pictures of Seattle’s former fleet.
• Trolley Tips: Even if you’re not an operator, you might still be interested in the deets of how these things are driven.
• Chelyabinsk Tram & Trolleybus network. Just giving some pictures to words: images of trolleys in action in that rare part of Russia blessed with a great transport deputy minister. By Yuri Maller. 2008. 
• Russia Beyond. 10 of the best trolleybuses Russia ever designed. This enthusiastic breakdown of some interesting Russian trolley vehicles predates the tragic destruction of Moscow’s robust network. By Boris Egerov. March 2018.

Above: "Mike Bencich, Dan Ashberger, coal miners, Somerset, Colorado, 8/29/80," by Richard Avedon

Two months ago I rhapsodized about Richard Avedon's In The American West, which I consider the greatest American photographic contribution since WWII. I talked about how rare the images are and the unique circumstances in which I came to find them. I was happy to share that the images would finally become easily accessible, in the form of a reissued book.

Alas.

I had a chance to look over the new Abrams release myself, and my heart sunk as soon as I opened the pages. The pictures are there, but their essence, their life and sparkle and indomitable presence– have been removed. How? Why?

The short version: 1) I love these images. And 2) Don’t buy this book. Here’s the breakdown:

As a professional photographer familiar with darkroom practice and the difference between various printing methods I recommend avoiding this release. Printing costs for art books have risen dramatically in the last 20 years, and publishers cut corners more than they used to in order to maximize profit. Sadly, the latest reissue of this monumental series is a victim of this approach.

I own the 1985 first edition, and a side-by-side comparison with the 2025 release is a heartbreaker: the 40th anniversary book features noticeably less dynamic range, uses a non-lustre paper type that has too much texture to represent fine detail, an ink/paper combo that resists full blacks, and an overall lack of fidelity when compared to the original images. As fans of the photos know, Avedon was meticulous and supervised the original book. This publication differs wildly, and although things like tonal range and resolution sound like technical details, they do have an emotional impact. The 1985 book grabs you by the throat; this one leaves you indifferent. Which is really saying something, considering how striking Avedon's original images are.

[Because digital cameras are inferior to film on precisely the areas we're comparing, and because uncalibrated computer monitors have subtle differences of their own, the best method of highlighting the problems is to use words instead of photographs.] Thus:

These examples are all taken from images early in the book for your convenience in comparing, but the problems exist throughout the whole book:

1. In the first picture, look at Allen Silvy’s rightmost eye. In the 1985 book we can discern and visually separate his eyebrow hair, his eyelid, and his eyelash. In the 2025 book all three of these elements are muddled into the same hue of dark grey.
2. Take a look at the face of Loudilla Johnson (Loretta Lynn fan club triptych, center face); in the 1985 book, she's glowing; in the 2025 printing, her face looks greasy. The gray goes to white too quickly. Look at the out-of-focus neck of Kay Johnson, to the right of her; in 1985 we get a subtle gradation that in 2025 looks instead like digital sludge. Loretta, on the left, also had more light-colored strands of hair that in 2025 are rendered as an invisible white.
3. For a more striking example, look at the title page image (Mary Watts/Tricia Steward (factory worker with her niece); in 1985, niece Tricia's eyes pop, and her face is comprised of many shades of light grey. In 2025, her face goes to near-white almost immediately. And notice how the ink creates a different shade of black for Tricia's shirt, which feels more brittle, less rich.
4. Look at housekeeper Patricia Wilde's freckles; she has less of them in the 2025 version, and the details of her hair are less readable.
5. One of the joys of these photos has always been how crisp they are, coming as they do from 8x10 negatives; one cannot experience that joy in the 2025 reissue. For instance, Patricia’s hair strands above, and the detail in Judy Gustavson's eye (wife of unemployed copper miner Roy Gustavson, a couple pages further in).
6. But if you needed any inarguable proof that the book is presenting something different than the original intent, look at Roy Gustavson's face's skin color! It's totally changed! Did he just spend 40 years in a tanning salon?? :) What's the deal? If this doesn’t say shoddy print job, I don’t know what does. Notice also the comparative lack of tonal range in the stripes on his shirt.

In summary, the new book appears to have been taken from a third-generation source, most likely digital scans of pages of the old book, rather than first or second-generation sources like proof prints or negs. There's a reason the high online price for the 1985 and 2005 editions has not gone down, despite the availability and low price of this 2025 book; it's simply not the same experience. I encourage seeking out the earlier editions– both the 1985 and 2005 contain a line on the front matter page that reads, "printed and bound in Japan." That's how you know you're getting the good stuff.

If you've seen the prints in person, as I have, or own the 1985 book, this printing will be a massive disappointment. For Abrams and Italy's Conti Typocolor (where this book was printed, unlike all previous editions), this is an embarrassment that's offensive to Avedon's legacy and the legacy of his most significant and essential body of work. Should we be surprised, then, that this reissue is nowhere to be found on either the Avedon Foundation website nor that of Conti Typocolor?

In one important way, Abrams’ catastrophic cash grab of a blunder actually continues Avedon's wishes. The pictures were never meant to be widely available. They have always been hard to find, something you have to search for, travel far to see, not unlike Avedon himself driving for hours and days to stay in touch with the friends he found in making this series. In our day nothing is sacred because everything is accessible, repeatable, duplicable. Scarcity is the new currency of value. And Avedon's climactic, most talked-about, most influential photographic contribution has unexpectedly remained exactly that: scarce, elusive, rare. It is rare no longer by design but by the incompetence and greed of publishing bureaucracies, but maybe that's neither here nor there. What really matters is that the pictures, like the people in them, continue to live mostly hidden lives, far from the limelight, available to be appreciated only by those with eyes to see.

Better late than never– here's a recent interview with me at the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library, which by the way is a Seattle treasure I can't recommend enough– a library that's open to all, sighted or otherwise, and inside a historic former auto dealership to boot! We discuss both my books and everything in between.

​Listen here! Enjoy!

​Photo by Miriam Kolker.

1. The Angle

I’m attracted to hidden lives. Those people who’ve had experiences such that they understand, often on a level beyond language, that status and wealth confer nothing additional upon a person’s character. As impressive as managing a hedge fund or an investment banking portfolio can be, I'm somehow more impressed by someone who knows how to break a chicken’s neck and cook it for dinner (I can't do any of these...). This is not a judgment on people, because I have friends I adore– deeply– in all class groups; no, this is rather a critique of thought. The gospel of materialism simply doesn't quench me, because I need more than surfaces.
Have you noticed how the social messaging of our century wants us to value appearances as if they were the real thing? To equate exposure with success; to equate success with getting ahead, winning awards, dollars, prizes, memberships to the elite. Things you can point to which say, I'm special. Better than others. They want us to think this is the goal, because when we do we buy more stuff.

But what about that which is not quantifiable? In my first book I write of M–, the young single mother of three who escaped her abusive family, secretly catching the Amtrak with her kiddos, safe and sound as the train began moving finally, on their way back to her humble origins in small-town Ohio. I found her quiet, steadfast courageousness heroic, all the moreso because it was uncelebrated. Her face will adorn no billboards, I wrote, but I hope her children grow up to recognize her as the hero she is, loving, sacrificing, living.

In 1874 Thomas Hardy wrote that “It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.” In our contemporary discourse this observation is unsurprising, though it's easy to forget how long today's central topics have been under discussion. Regardless, doesn't Hardy's line also ring true when applied to achievement? Isn't it also difficult for us to define our notions of value in a language chiefly designed to praise quantifiable success? Why do we have to clarify what we mean by success, or power, when discussing someone like M–? Why do these words default to their most superficial definitions? I want a vocabulary that recognizes the beauty and worth of so many of my dearest friends, my passengers, and countless others I'll never meet: those unknown lives so rich with incident and feeling, people who show up for their loved ones, who have modest dreams, who see through the mirage of status and understand that an easier life, or a flashier life, is not always a better one.

2. The Work
​
As you read this, and moreso if you've read my books, you won't be surprised to learn that my favorite photographic series has always been Richard Avedon's In the American West. That work, along with Sally Mann’s depictions of rural life and landscape, stand tall for me. Both are triumphs of style in the service of mood, substance, reflection. And both, critically, are celebrations of the hidden lives I mention above. 

In the American West is a collection of 123 large-format film portraits of a demythologised modern West: coal miners, drifters, waitresses, carnies, housewives, oil field workers, snake skinners, hay haulers, Hutterites, prisoners, sheep hands, grain threshers, pawnbrokers. Beginning in 1979 he spent five years with photographer Laura Wilson and a few other assistants in countless middles of nowhere, meeting strangers, finding faces, building relationships in the forgotten corners of our country's vast interior.

Why did Richard Avedon, then the most famous photographer in the world, a rock star who defined the look of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, who photographed Monroe and Bardot and Hepburn and numerous presidents, make such an unprecedented late-career pivot? After a lifetime of elevating models and celebrities, why did he now turn in the opposite direction?

The project began as a joke between a Fort Worth museum director and his curator, primarily because the idea of the world's premier fashion photographer shooting ranch hands and factory workers was both absurd and impossible to imagine. However, curator knew Avedon, and the concept made its way to him. To everyone's surprise, he was interested. The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth agreed to meet Avedon's request of a fully funded project lasting five years, with no creative oversight, the option to abandon the project if no solution was found, and a final delivery of 100 prints to be exhibited at the museum. 

He would go on to photograph 17,000 images of 752 people in 17 states. It's worth clarifying that each of those images was not 35mm, not 70mm, not even 120 or 4x5, but a full 8-inch by 10-inch negative, loaded into the camera one sheet at a time, with a resolution capacity which, if you haven't seen in person, you simply don't have the capacity to imagine, because there is no other device in existence, invented before or since, which can generate such a detailed image. You could make a print from it the size of a skyscraper and it would still look crisp.
​
It's also worth noting that the 8x10 view camera, as Avedon used it, involves a certain amount of ceremony, and I think this impacted the final portraits. There's a psychological difference between somebody with a tiny point-and-shoot and a camera that needs three people working it, a shooter, loader, and focuser, plus another keeping track of all the negative plates and other ephemera lying around. That and the large white sheet Avedon always placed behind the subject, usually over a building facade, anywhere with neutral outdoor light. He wanted no shadows, nothing to tell the viewer where to look.

Portrait photography would already have been uncommon in these times and places, decades before we all began taking selfies, but what Avedon was doing would've been especially so: he was returning the medium from reflex, which is what photo had lately become, to its original state: that of ritual. The act of creating these portraits was an undertaking, a production, and I have to assume this affected the subjects, gave it a heft and gravitas. They found themselves taking it seriously, collaborating in something that felt unique and special. Also, the camera’s plane of focus was so narrow that the subject’s eyes might be clear but not their nose or ears. They had to remain absolutely still once focus had been set. Candid shots these are not. Additionally, there was another reason for making sure the subjects didn't move: Avedon never looked through the camera after framing and focusing. He stood to one side, letting the subject develop their own private rapport with the lens, knowing there was no one staring through it at them.

Each subject was someone found in the course of Avedon and company’s travels, who agreed to be photographed. The person is shown separate from any background, under neutral daylight, on a massive, grain-free negative sheet that either is orthochromatic or appears so. The title is always the subject’s name, occupation, and date/location. The white background had hitherto only been used with models and movie stars; even today the effect remains striking. You stand in front of them and then the game begins, the game we play with all public photos because photography, with the exception of private photography, is the medium which has no meaning: we instead seek to ascribe meaning to the images. The longer we regard a photograph, the more meanings we come up with. In playing this game we learn about ourselves.

We have to remember that this vision of the West was completely new– one without landscapes, without cowboys, bereft of romance and nature. Shockingly for the time, there were no vistas in this depiction; Avedon wanted to record not the landscape, but the impact of the landscape on the body. The portraits are often unflattering. Freckles and burns and lines and evidence of toil, unseen labour and strife. He wanted to celebrate the uncelebrated. This was arguably the first large-scale reveal that the people of the American West no longer had mythic qualities; it was now a land of the poor, about to be crushed under the greed of Reagan’s deregulated capitalism and later, the corporatization of the West and the beginning of rural drug culture. The West, always a mythic construction, had now become a simulacrum of its former self. 

But this was no journalism project. Avedon didn't pretend to objectivity. “A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture,” he writes in the dense but brief essay which accompanies the images. “The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered by someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about. My concerns are not his. We have separate ambitions for the image. His need to plead his case probably goes as deep as my need to plead mine, but the control is with me. A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in photographs. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

3. The Search

When did Avedon's stark figure-on-white pieces first enter my life? I no longer remember. It feels truer to say they were always there, lurking, waiting for the right time. I know I'd found them by my twenties, perhaps in college, visual ephemera from 2005, the last time they were shown to the public. Avedon kept a tight leash on the pictures; during his lifetime they were never for sale, and the 17,000 images that weren't used were all destroyed at his direction. He further specified that after his death no prints from the 123 surviving negatives ever be made again, partly because Avedon's exacting printing process could never be duplicated by someone besides him... but mostly because he didn't want the worlds of fashion, high culture and Hollywood exploiting these people or their images. He had become close to these folks, and would maintain friendships with many of them for decades after the project, driving for days to the forgotten towns where they still lived. “I wish I’d never stopped photographing the people we met,” he told Laura Wilson in 2003. “I wish I could have stayed with the project my whole life.”

It's ironic that the climactic achievement of the definitive fashion photographer of the 20th century would be these portraits– dynamic and maximalist as per Avedon’s usual, but resolutely unglamorous. When the images were finally completed in 1985 no museum in New York would agree to exhibit them. The idea of poor people adorning their walls was apparently unthinkable. The Amon Carter premiered the images at their own museum in Fort Worth (this was always the contractual expectation), and the resulting furor involved every imaginable response. The images were offensive; exploitative; uncaring; dismissive; brilliant; empowering; confusing; breathtaking. In the annals of photo history we now understand them as seminal, unsurpassed in their technical exactitude, a milestone in the depiction of ordinary people, the culminating– if unexpected– masterwork of Avedon's long and storied career. I think they're the most significant American photographic work made in the postwar period.

The images are nevertheless very hard to find. Any photographer knows that a reproduction of a print from an 8x10 negative cannot seriously be called a likeness; the drop in resolution and tonal range is akin to a Xerox photocopy of the Mona Lisa, or a VHS recording of a TV broadcast of a Christopher Nolan IMAX feature, although this comparison itself falls flat since an 8x10 negative has over 16 times the resolution of the largest IMAX film. Basically, you really want to see the real thing.

But the full set of 123 has only been exhibited once; 78 of the images were shown again in 2005. Each massive final print was the result of at least 50 drafts, with dozens of dodges and burns per picture, in total using over 60,000 square feet of silver-coated paper and a million gallons of water. They were so hard to create that only three sets of prints were ever made: those belonging to the Amon Carter; another that's archived behind closed doors at the University of Arizona; and a set gifted by Avedon to the original printer, Ruedi Hofman, which the Avedon Foundation refuses to recognize because they’re unsigned. If you missed the 1985 and 2005 shows, like I did, you're out of luck.

The next best thing is the book. All museum exhibitions have an accompanying monograph, and both editions of In The American West, printed the years of the above shows, went out of print instantly. The 1985 first edition in particular continues to fetch high prices online, and every used or rare book bookstore I’ve walked into in the last twenty years has the same answer when I ask, “Do you have Richard Avedon’s In the American West?” They always say no instantly, with confidence, because they know exactly what I’m talking about. This is a title people search for, and it’s not one they give away. I’ve looked in bookstores in LA, New York, Seattle; I’ve gone to the rare book room at Powell’s; I’ve combed through countless photography sections, looking halfheartedly under A for Avedon, a thing you do out of habit, knowing the outcome but trying it anyway. 

Only now do I realize my bus stories are after something quite similar to what Avedon was doing with these pictures. I too am channeling into art my experiences with dismissed and ignored peoples, in order to explore themes of my own choosing. Avedon famously said, “Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is . . . the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.” I too am taken by the mysteries and hardship of existence, and compelled to make art from my time with the uncelebrated lives I encounter. I was searching for In the American West before I even had a blog, let alone begun my books.

In 2025 I was in a used bookstore in Lambertville, New Jersey, population 4,139. It was my second time passing through there. The owner, incredibly, remembered my face from my only previous visit, while also noting that my companion hadn’t been in the store before. This was true. We found ourselves in the photography section. Last time I had been surprised to notice a copy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the Walker Evans/James Agee collaboration about impoverished Dust Bowl farmers. This time we were excited to discover a boxed first edition of August Sander’s People of the 20th Century, Volumes I-VII. Delightful, but not necessary to purchase. Then my eye wandered to the left. By this point I no longer consciously searched for In the American West. I had lost all expectation. I just looked at the tall, thin book in my periphery because it had an unusual brown cloth binding on its spine.

I remember my brain stumbling on the size of the moment. Could it be? Right here? My companion and I couldn’t believe it. Lambertville. The store had not one but three copies of In the American West, including one that was signed! They had Avedon’s The Sixties. They had Winogrand’s Women are Beautiful for $700. You just never know. We found it. Or so it felt; I think it found us. Because naturally in the course of poring over the book’s reproductions, we couldn’t resist looking up the exhibition history. Would we ever get to see these in person? Sure, they’d only been shown twice in the last four decades, but you find yourself checking anyway, the way you check all the bookstores…

Imagine our surprise. The images were on display right now, 40 of them, for the 40-year anniversary, in Fort Worth, at the original museum and the only place the public has seen the series, on display for… another three weeks.

​Of course we dropped everything and went. We had to. This is what I save money for. This is my rainy day. I mention above the uniqueness and dense clarity of an 8x10 negative, how you really have to see the prints in person. We walked into the room and stood there, inches away from them, no glass between us and the print surface, incredibly, nothing separating us from these faces but time. The first image we came to is also the one on the book cover:

​“Sandra Bennett, twelve year old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, 8/23/80.” ​

In life it is over six feet tall. You find yourself stunned, by the impossible clarity of every strand of hair. Nothing can prepare you for this level of crisp detail. And the punchy blacks, darker than anything mere ink can achieve. You remember that ink on wood pulp cannot touch the vertiginous richness of silver halide crystals burned by light. The gradations of deep grey, almost black but not quite, revealing secrets you never saw in the book. The faces coming alive because they’re bigger than you now, almost able to speak, about to blink, faces you have to look up at. In person there can be no argument: these portraits are clearly and unambiguously reverential. Avedon’s deep respect for each of them fairly oozes from the frames. 

Who are the pictures for? And why did Avedon choose to do this project, with its focus so unlike his previous subjects? I think the images are their own answer. Abrams is reissuing the book version of the series later this year, and they will once again be available at long last, the images able to speak for themselves if only in book form, calling to those who thirst for immediate, unvarnished life, hidden life, who have that great allergy to the limelight I describe above, who have definitions of success our language struggles to capture. 
​
The first people Avedon ever showed prints of this project to were a group of coal miners he'd individually photographed in Reliance, Wyoming, population 714. Avedon found that of all the groups he shot, coal miners were generally the most sensitive, perhaps because of their proximity to sudden death. They worked in absurd and miserable conditions and looked out for each other’s lives daily. Laura Wilson writes that they were taken aback when they first saw the prints, tacked up on a building facade as a morning surprise when the workers showed up. They slowed down and took their time, regarding the images with silence and the occasional murmur, considering themselves as seen by another.

I look upon their portraits and wonder what they saw. I hope the thought crossed their mind: My life has value. It is filled to bursting with detail, and emotion, and significance, for no other reason than that I am human.

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​UPDATE: We caution against buying the Abrams reissue, which has a substandard printing process to the previous editions, resulting in reduced tonal range and, for me, a noticeably less emotionally involved experience. Much more in a follow-up post here.

First image: "Debbie McClendon, carney, Thermopolis, Wyoming, 7/29/81."
​Second image: "Roberto Lopez, oil field worker, Lyons, Texas, 9/28/80."

Please note that the images above are not art. They are reproductions of reproductions of reproductions, intended only to give a vague idea. Get the book if you can; or see the prints yourself at the Carter, through August 10th. A note on the Paris show, which is on through October 12: those are just 16" x 20" proof prints, although proofs of all 123 images are on display. But they are not the full-size prints viewable at the Carter Museum, which are either 56" or 76" tall per image. For once you want to be going to Texas, not Paris...

Sources:
Avedon, R. (1985). In the American West. Harry N Abrams Incorporated. 
Wilson, L. (2003). Avedon at work: In the American West. Harry Ransom Humanities Research.