Suddenly you find yourself in the presence not of images but of

Suddenly, you find yourself in the presence not of images but of people themselves – touched and disturbed by a reality that is, literally, staring you right in the face. Too ground down and hungry and indifferent to cut themselves off from Avedon’s inquiring camera, the people he photographed in Nevada and Utah and Colorado and New Mexico simply stood there and allowed themselves to be recorded for posterity.The effectiveness of these pictures has something to do with Avedon’s subjects and their lack of barriers. But it must also have much to do with the photographer’s late recognition of his own limitations. Knowing, in the end, that it was his eternal fate to be superficial, unchallenging, unimaginative, emotionally cold and banal, Avedon brilliantly evolved a form of photography in which none of those defects can spoil or diminish Having done that, he got to work.

These people led hard lives, were marked by them – and then Avedon took their photographs. To look at them in their grim and self-contained otherness feels like witnessing actual slices of human existence itself: all these people have is their sense of themselves, and they cling to it, each of them, as fiercely and defiantly as life itself. Avedon had enough sense, in his best work, to leave himself out of the picture.n At the National Portrait Gallery, London (0171-306 0055), to 11 June. The language of computer communication throws up a few minor ironies. One is that, while it’s supposed to be a means of emancipating discourse, the names invented for it are borrowed from things that do the opposite – the Net, the Web. Another is that the word “interaction” gets chucked around with abandon, but modem-based life is extraordinarily atomised and individualistic: sitting in front of a computer screen you may be able to make some great friends in Finland, but it takes its toll on more common forms of interaction, such as, you know, talking to people.

That irony seemed particularly acute listening to Radio 1’s “Interactive Evening” on Sunday, an event frankly short on interaction. The main interactivity was an on-line interview with Dave, the drummer from Blur. An on-line interview is, in effect, a phone-in in which the listeners can’t hear what’s being said – in terms of participation, surely a step backwards, though in this case probably an advantage. When Dave was asked to sum up the proceedings at the end of the evening, it turned out that most of the e-mail he had received was either pure abuse (a decidedly non-interactive approach to conversation) or concerned with masturbation (a decidedly non-interactive approach to sex).