Avedon, who died in 2004, was the greatest American photographer of his generation. For In the American West, he traveled throughout five years, meeting and photographing the plain people of the West: ranch workers, roustabouts, bar girls, drifters, and gamblers. The resulting book includes 120 exquisitely printed black-and-white photographs, an essay by Avedon on his working methods and portrait philosophy, a journal of the project by Laura Wilson, and a foreword by John Rohrbach