Blake Gopnik wrote a nice review of the Richard Avedon show in today’s Washington Post. Gopnik hits on why Avedon is such a great portrait photographer:

The crucial thing about Avedon’s approach is he’s an equal-opportunity authenticator. Here you are, in the presence of someone who’s supposed to be the greatest recorder of the nation’s great and mighty, and you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.

As Gopnik points out, Avedon was actually able to make the egocentric architect Buckminster Fuller (see above) seem like the grumpy old man next door whose house kids would egg on Halloween night.