"I've worked out a series of no's," Richard Avedon tells us. "No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the 'yes.' I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us." Printed on the wall in the first gallery of Avedon's portrait retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum, this text is a neat setup for the work that follows. Its brief litany of denial and affirmation sheds valuable light on the photographer's process while leaving the exact nature of the portrait session itself—"the thing that happens between... More >>>