(1923-2004)

Jody Williams, Washington, D. C., 3rd November 1998.

Archival Pigment Print. A little later printed, dated 2000.

Image size 36.8 x 37.4 cm; sheet size 50.2 x 40.5 cm.

Verso imprinted caption with photographer's copyright, inscription and date.

"Isn't it rather strange that the biggest risk facing mankind is mankind itself."

Jody Williams, (b. 1950) the human rights activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is presented to us as sad and thoughtful. She throws the viewer a gaze which is frontal and at the same time filled with emptiness. Her lips are tightly closed, no expression moves her face. She appears to look on with apathy in the face of world events. Avedon allows her contours to flow sinuously into the black background. Her hair floats in the air – you might say she appears to be an angel or a fairy. She rests her chin on the palm of her right hand, the fingers bent and pressed against her cheek. The gesture makes reference to the allegory of melancholy (see Albrecht Dürer’s, Melencolia I, 1514). It is precisely this melancholy and pensiveness which Avedon wishes to convey in the present portrait. Pensive, alone, merged into the empty background, Williams looks at us and would reach out to us with her gaze, and demand that we play our part in improving the world.