In 1976, ahead of his portrait, Henry Kissinger reportedly said to Richard Avedon, “Be kind to me.” Truman Capote called his own Avedon portrait, from 1974, “very unflattering.” The writer Harold Brodkey summed up the Avedon experience simply: “[it’s] not the way I look, but the way I am.” Avedon, for his part, was unapologetic about his revealing style: “I’ve never thought of my pictures as cruel in any way, but as sort of beautiful.” Before he was admired and feared by the world’s most famous figures, Avedon traveled through Italy in the 1940s, capturing anonymous subjects in the streets of Taormina, Rome, and Palermo. His work from this time is on display at Gagosian, Rome, alongside later portraits of Jacqueline Kennedy, Bette Middler, and other recognizable faces. —Paulina Prosnitz