The Unlikely Marriage of James Baldwin and Richard Avedon: A Look Back at Their Very Timely Collaboration

The genius in the collaboration of James Baldwin, eloquent chronicler of racism, and Richard Avedon, fashion’s foremost photographer, lay in the fact that it was so unexpected: Together, in 1964, they published Nothing Personal, a joint portrait of America at a time when playwrights like Arthur Miller were celebrities and Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death was still being felt deeply—which is why, just months after the Civil Rights Act was passed, Baldwin and Avedon placed their photos alongside those of mental institution patients and SNCC protestors, as well as, of course, Baldwin’s words, which warned that the country was “afflicted by an ignorance of our natures vaster and more dangerous than our ignorance of life on Mars.” It wasn’t the first time the pair collaborated—they actually went to the same high school in the Bronx in the late 1930s, where they worked on the same literary magazine—but their partnership has somehow been largely forgotten until this year, which has seen Pace and Pace/MacGill Galleries resurrect “Nothing Personal” into an exhibition now on view in New York, and Taschen finally republish the book, which has been out of print for decades, accompanied by a new essay by Hilton Als. Take a timely look back in time, here.