Francis Bacon, Painter, Paris, France, April 11, 1979

From the Getty Museum record

Here Avedon abutted two negatives made during the same session, a reference to Bacon's series of self-portraits. Once asked about portraiture, Avedon remarked: "A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks. He's implicated in what's happening, and he has a certain real power over the result."