There is not much more to life than that story...

As my book Portraits was being completed, there were certain artists whose work had affected me, whom I had not photographed, and one of them was Jean Renoir. Renoir lived in Beverly Hills and I went to him. His home looked like everything I’d always thought a home should be. It looked like south of France. It didn’t look like Beverly Hills. There were flowers in and out of the rooms and sunshine coming through the windows. And a long table in the middle of the room. A long table at the center of a house has always had great meaning for me. When I arrived, I was shown to his bedroom. He was naked, being helped to dress, completely unembarassed by my presence. He was old and quite sick at the time and he walked with difficulty, with a walker. There was something so moving about his face and about his life and his work and what he stood for. He was one of the last people I felt in awe of. When the sitting was over, (in those days I worked with incredible intensity, I mean my heart would pound out of control while I photographed), Renoir said, "Won’t you join us?"

So I sat at the table and some friends arrived with vodka and a Sunday cake and Renoir sat down. Behind him was a portrait of him as a child painted by his father and the potteries he had made as a child guided by his father.

A young Czechoslovakian director who was there visiting started to talk with Renoir about Film. What happened to me used to happen to me very often — I froze, I couldn’t speak or think. I felt inadequate. I thought — what can I say or contribute to anything that happens at this table. Well, actually nothing so grand was happening. I considered myself very good at disguising my feelings and I knew there was no necessity for me to speak. I could legitimately be a quiet person. But I was paralyzed inside. Smiling, trying to appear comfortable, thinking — what right do I have to be at this table? I came to do my photograph, I should leave. I am not a friend of the Renoirs, this is Sunday.

Renoir stood to go to the bathroom and I used that occasion to say goodbye to everyone. As I walked to the front door, he came our of his bedroom with his walker which sort of blocked my way. And we were stuck there, in the narrow hall, in this confrontation. I extended my hand and said, "Monsiour Renoir, thank you very much for allowing me to photograph you." And he looked into my eyes and spoke, and I’ll never forget his words, "It is not what is said that matters, it’s the feelings that cross the table."

I froze my face. I walked to the car and wept. Imagine a man in his eighties, sick as he was, knowing what was happening to me at the table, and to care, and to say it. Well, that’s my kind of standard for human behavior. To be able to be that present in each moment. The quality of paying attention that he had, and then the compassion. I think there is not much more to life than that story: to be that age, surrounded by your father’s works of art, to have created your own, to live in a house with sunshine falling through the windows, and a wife, and a jar of vodka with spirals of lemon rind in it, and friends and your own son who has become a teacher and his children sitting with the grownups, on Sunday — and to still pay that kind of attention to a stranger.
Richard Avedon