Richard Avedon (1923-2004) came to photography following World War II and built a 60-year career in fashion, reportage, portraiture and advertising that seemed to melt perceived barriers between photography’s many genres. When the Richard Avedon Foundation announced earlier this year that the Gagosian Gallery would take over representation of the photographer’s work, it was only a matter of time that a major exhibition would go on view.

Richard Avedon: Murals & Portraits is the result, and major is no exaggeration. Inasmuch as the most recent exhibitions of Avedon’s work have focused on fashion [ICP, 2009; Gagosian, 2011], it’s not surprising that this show revisits the photographer’s monumental portraiture through a group of four mural-sized group images made between 1969 and 1971, with related individual portraits and ephemera.

Against the backdrop of America's social and political transformation during the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution and the political/counterculture battlefield at home, Avedon crafted a unique visual record of a critical period in time through portraiture. Between 20 to 35 feet wide and comprising up to five panels, the murals revealed a striking new format in which subjects were positioned frontally and aligned against a stark white background. This intensity of characterization and confrontational aspect typifies Avedon's portraits and prefigures In the American West [1979-1984] by nearly a decade.

His portrait groupings featured emblematic figures of the time: Andy Warhol with the players and stars of The Factory; The Chicago Seven, political radicals charged with conspiracy to incite riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention; the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his extended family; and the Mission Council, a group of military and government officials who governed the United States' participation in the Vietnam War.

In his recent review in the New York Times, Holland Cotter says, “The past season has given us some memorable photography shows in the city’s museums and galleries. None have been better — technically more audacious, emotionally more varied, ethically more unanswering — than this one.” Read the review.

A catalogue of the exhibition is available, including the four murals and related images accompanied by images of archival material, including Avedon’s diaries, correspondence, and contact prints. Essays by Louis Menand, Mary Panzer, Paul Roth, Bob Rubin, and William Shawcross explore Avedon’s penetrating incursions into the history and spirit of these tumultuous years. Gagosian/Abrams, $100. The four mural photographs are also available from the gallery as foldout cards, $20.

Richard Avedon: Murals & Portraits, at Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21^st Street, NY, NY through July 27. Hours: M-F, 10am-6pm.

Above: Richard Avedon | The Chicago Seven: Lee Weiner, John Froines, Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Dave Dellinger, Chicago, Illinois, November 5, 1969, 1970. Gelatin silver print, 121 3/4 x 242 3/4 inches  (309.2 x 616.5 cm). Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.