Today I went to Louisiana and saw the Richard Avedon exhibition. I thought his portraits were amazing.

There, I saw a brief snippet of a documentary where Avedon talks about the extraordinary intimacy of the photographer-subject relationship. . . how every nuance is revealing, how every action has subtle consequences.

I don’t take portraits, and most of my shots are shot without the subject’s knowledge.

But Avedon’s portraiture is so powerful, so candid, and so much more revealing of the subject’s humanity.

In the documentary he reveals that he rarely stood behind his camera, preferring instead to stand to the side to better enable him to interact with the subject.

I think it is the quality of this interaction that takes the photographer from technician to artist.