On Saturday, the first major retrospective of the photographs of Richard Avedon since his death in 2004 opens at SFMOMA. San Francisco is the only U.S. stop on the tour for this show, and Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004 focuses primarily on the artist as portrait photographer, featuring some of his best-known portraits including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Marilyn Monroe, Bjork and William S. Burroughs. We saw a preview of the show yesterday, and it's both a gorgeous collection of images as well as a moving document of the faces of the late 20th Century.

The show includes several of Avedon's famous fashion pictures from the 50s and 60s including one of Avedon in mid-leap with Twiggy (left), and Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955 (below). Also included are a group of photographs that Avedon took between of 1979 and 1984 of ordinary people in the American West -- an evocative set of images that combine the plain, documentary sensibilities of 19th-century photographers with Avedon's own polished, fashion-world aesthetic. The result is a powerful example of fine art portraiture of non-famous, non-beautiful people that stops short of the exploitative tone of some of Diane Arbus' work.