Though he would always love the theatricality of fashion photography, he also made pictures that functioned as social protest. In 1939 African American opera singer Marian Anderson had been barred from singing in Washington's Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who cited a white-performers-only policy. It was an outrage that had long troubled Avedon. In 1963 he had the chance to photograph members of the DAR at a convention, showing a group of women in dowdy gowns, smug with self-certainty; one of them, caught off-guard, actually has her back to the camera. It can't be the kind of portrait any of them were hoping for.

For many, it was their first job, the time they got their foot in the door. For Randal Ford, it was a commercial photoshoot with 10 cows on a dairy farm in rural Texas. The client was thrilled with Ford's conceptual series; the dairy community left rather confused. Ford was inspired, and his first foray into animal portraiture eventually lead to his magnum opus, The Animal Kingdom. Ford is historically a portrait photographer of humans.