Richard Avedon was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."
Photography career
Avedon was born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to a Jewish Russian family. He attended
DeWitt Clinton High SchoolDeWitt Clinton High School is an American high school located in the Bronx, New York City, New York.-History:Clinton opened in 1897 at 60 West 13th Street at the northern end of Greenwich Village under the name of Boys High School, although this Boys High School was not related to the one in Brooklyn...
in
the BronxThe Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, where he worked on the school paper with
James BaldwinJames Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
. After briefly attending
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, he started as a photographer for the Merchant Marines in 1942, taking identification pictures of the crewmen with his
RolleiRollei is a German manufacturer of optical goods founded in 1920 by Paul Franke and Reinhold Heidecke in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras...
flex camera given to him by his father as a going-away present. In 1944, he began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly discovered by
Alexey BrodovitchAlexey Brodovitch was a Russian-born photographer, designer and instructor who is most famous for his art direction of fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar from 1938 to 1958.- Early life in Russia :...
, the art director for the fashion magazine
Harper's BazaarHarper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
.
Lillian Bassman- Life :Her parents were Jewish intellectuals who emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1905 and settled in Brooklyn, New York. She studied at the Textile High School, with Alexey Brodovitch, in Manhattan and graduated in 1933...
also promoted Avedon's career at Harper's.
In 1946, Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and
LifeLife generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar. Avedon did not conform to the standard technique of taking fashion photographs, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camera. Instead, Avedon showed models full of emotion, smiling, laughing, and, many times, in action.
In 1966, Avedon left Harper's Bazaar to work as a staff photographer for Vogue magazine. He proceeded to become the lead photographer of Vogue and photographed most of the covers from 1973 until
Anna WintourAnna Wintour, OBE is the British-born editor-in-chief of American Vogue, a position she has held since 1988. With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and sunglasses, Wintour has become an institution throughout the fashion world, widely praised for her eye for fashion trends and her support for...
became editor in chief in late 1988. Notable among his fashion advertisement photograph series are the recurring assignments for
Gianni VersaceGianni Versace was an Italian fashion designer and founder of Gianni Versace S.p.A., an international fashion house, which produces accessories, fragrances, makeup and home furnishings as well as clothes. He also designed costumes for the theatre and films, and was a friend of Madonna, Elton John,...
, starting from the spring/summer campaign 1980. He also photographed the Calvin Klein Jeans campaign featuring a fifteen year old
Brooke ShieldsBrooke Christa Shields is an American actress and model. Some of her better-known movies include Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon, as well as TV shows such as Suddenly Susan, That '70s Show and Lipstick Jungle....
, as well as directing her in the television commercials. Avedon first worked with Shields in 1974 for a Colgate toothpaste ad. He shot her for Versace, 12 American Vogue covers and Revlon's Most Unforgettable Women campaign. In the February 9, 1981 issue of Newsweek, Avedon said that "Brooke is a lightning rod. She focuses the inarticulate rage people feel about the decline in contemporary morality and destruction of innocence in the world." On working with Avedon, Shields told
InterviewInterview is an American magazine which has the nickname The Crystal Ball Of Pop. It was founded in late 1969 by artist Andy Warhol. The magazine features intimate conversations between some of the world's biggest celebrities, artists, musicians, and creative thinkers...
magazine in May 1992 "When Dick walks into the room, a lot of people are intimidated. But when he works, he's so acutely creative, so sensitive. And he doesn't like it if anyone else is around or speaking. There is a mutual vulnerability, and a moment of fusion when he clicks the shutter. You either get it or you don't".
In addition to his continuing fashion work, Avedon began to branch out and photographed patients of mental hospitals, the
Civil Rights MovementThe civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
in 1963, protesters of the Vietnam War, and later the fall of the
Berlin WallThe Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
.
During this period, Avedon also created two famous sets of portraits of
The BeatlesThe Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
. The first, taken in mid to late 1967, became one of the first major rock poster series, and consisted of five striking psychedelic portraits of the group — four heavily solarized individual color portraits (solarisation of prints by his assistant, Gideon Lewin, retouching by Bob Bishop) and a black-and-white group portrait taken with a Rolleiflex camera and a normal
Planar lensThe Zeiss Planar is a photographic lens designed by Paul Rudolph at Carl Zeiss in 1896. Rudolph's original was a six-element symmetrical design....
. The next year he photographed the much more restrained portraits that were included with
The BeatlesThe Beatles is the ninth official album by the English rock group The Beatles, a double album released in 1968. It is also commonly known as "The White Album" as it has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed on its plain white sleeve.The album was written and recorded during a...
in 1968. Among the many other rock bands photographed by Avedon, in 1973 he shot
Electric Light OrchestraElectric Light Orchestra were a British rock group from Birmingham who released eleven studio albums between 1971 and 1986 and another album in 2001. ELO were formed to accommodate Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne's desire to create modern rock and pop songs with classical overtones...
with all the members exposing their bellybuttons for recording,
On the Third DayOn the Third Day is the third studio LP by Electric Light Orchestra and the first to be recorded without any input from Roy Wood.-Overview:...
.
Avedon was always interested in how portraiture captures the personality and soul of its subject. As his reputation as a photographer became widely known, he brought in many famous faces to his studio and photographed them with a large-format 8x10
view cameraThe view camera is a type of camera first developed in the era of the Daguerreotype and still in use today, though with many refinements. It comprises a flexible bellows which forms a light-tight seal between two adjustable standards, one of which holds a lens, and the other a viewfinder or a...
. His portraits are easily distinguished by their minimalist style, where the person is looking squarely in the camera, posed in front of a sheer white background. Avedon would at times evoke reactions from his portrait subjects by guiding them into uncomfortable areas of discussion or asking them psychologically probing questions. Through these means he would produce images revealing aspects of his subject's character and personality that were not typically captured by others.
He is also distinguished by his large prints, sometimes measuring over three feet in height. His large-format portrait work of drifters, miners, cowboys and others from the western United States became a best-selling book and traveling exhibit entitled In the American West, and is regarded as an important hallmark in 20th century portrait photography, and by some as Avedon's
magnum opusMasterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....
. Commissioned by the
Amon Carter MuseumThe Amon Carter Museum of American Art is located in Fort Worth, Texas. It was established by Amon G. Carter to house his collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. Carter’s will provided a museum in Fort Worth devoted to American art.When the museum opened...
in Fort Worth, Texas, it was a six-year project Avedon embarked on in 1979, that produced 125 portraits of people in the American west who caught Avedon's eye.
Avedon was drawn to working people such as miners and oil field workers in their soiled work clothes, unemployed drifters, and teenagers growing up in the West circa 1979-84. When first published and exhibited, In the American West was criticized for showing what some considered to be a disparaging view of America. Avedon was also lauded for treating his subjects with the attention and dignity usually reserved for the politically powerful and celebrities.
Laura WilsonLaura Cunningham Wilson is an American photographer. Her photographs have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ Magazine, London’s Sunday Times Magazine, Wallpaper and the Washington Post Magazine.-Life and career:Wilson was born Laura Cunningham and raised in...
served as Avedon's assistant during the creation of In the American West and in 2003 published a photo book documenting the experiences, Avedon at Work, In the American West.
Avedon became the first staff photographer for
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
in 1992. He has won many awards for his photography, including the International Center of Photography Master of Photography Award in 1993, the
Prix NadarThe Prix Nadar is an annual prize awarded for a photography book edited in France. The prize was created in 1955 and is awarded by a jury of photojournalists and publishing experts....
in 1994 for his photobook Evidence, and the Royal Photographic Society 150th Anniversary Medal in 2003. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 2001.
Avedon had numerous museum exhibitions around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art in New York, the
Guggenheim Museum BilbaoThe Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The...
in Spain, and the
Museum of Fine Arts, BostonThe Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
.
Personal life
In 1944, Avedon married Dorcas Nowell, who later became a model and was known professionally as Doe Avedon. Nowell and Avedon divorced after five years of marriage. In 1951, he married Evelyn Franklin; she died on March 13, 2004. Their marriage produced one son, John Avedon, an author and authority on
TibetTibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
.
Martial arts movie star
Loren AvedonLoren A. Avedon is an American martial arts film actor. He has also acted in several popular American TV shows, including Baywatch.-Biography:...
is the nephew of Richard Avedon.
On October 1, 2004, Avedon died of a brain hemorrhage in
San Antonio, TexasSan Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
, while shooting an assignment for
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
. At the time of his death, he was also working on a new project titled Democracy to focus on the run-up to the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
Avedon is survived by his son John, and his four grandchildren William, Matthew, Michael and Caroline.
Funny Face
Hollywood presented a fictional account of his early career in the 1957 musical
Funny FaceFunny Face is an American musical film released in 1957 in VistaVision Technicolor, with assorted songs by George and Ira Gershwin. The film was written by Leonard Gershe and directed by Stanley Donen. It stars Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, and Kay Thompson...
, starring
Fred AstaireFred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
as the fashion photographer "Dick Avery." Avedon supplied some of the still photographs used in the production, including its most famous single image: an intentionally overexposed close-up of
Audrey HepburnAudrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...
's face in which only her famous features - her eyes, her eyebrows, and her mouth - are visible.
Hepburn was Avedon's muse in the 1950s and 1960s, and he went so far as to say "I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait."
Famous photographs
- Marella Agnelli
Marella Agnelli, born Princess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto is an Italian socialite, style icon and wife of Fiat chairman Gianni Agnelli...
, Italian socialite, 1953
- Carmen Mayrink Veiga, Brazilian socialite (Vogue's 10 best dressed), 1970
- Dovima
Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba , later known as Dorothy Horan, and best known as Dovima, was a model during the 1950s....
with Elephants, 1955
- Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, actress, 1957
- Homage to Munkacsi, Carmen, coat by Cardin, Paris 1957
- Christina Bellin
Christina P. Bellin was an American model and an international social figure who was born in New York City. Her full name was Christina Paolozzi Bellin.-Daughter of Heiress:...
, model, 1962
- Dwight David Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
, President of the United States, 1964
- The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, 1967
- Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
and Members of the Factory, New York 1969
- Sly Stone
Sly Stone is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, most famous for his role as frontman for Sly & the Family Stone, a band which played a critical role in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1993, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of...
(cover of Fresh Album), 1973
- Asha Puthli (She Loves to Hear the Music Album back cover), 1974
- Ronald Fischer, beekeeper, 1981
- Nastassja Kinski
Nastassja Kinski is a German-born American-based actress who has appeared in more than 60 films. Her starring roles include her Golden Globe Award-winning portrayal of the title character in Tess and her roles in two erotic films , as well as parts in Wim Wenders' films The Wrong Move; Paris,...
and the Serpent, 1981
- Pile of beautiful people, Versace campaign 1982.
Books by Richard Avedon
- Observations
Observations is a collaborative coffee table book with photography by Richard Avedon, commentary by Truman Capote and design by Alexey Brodovitch. It features a slipcase with color, all-capitalized lettering; the book itself is further housed in a clear acetate/glassine slip cover and is printed...
, 1959. A collaborative book with Truman CapoteTruman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
containing portraits of many famous people of the twentieth century, including Pablo PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Mae WestMae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
.
- Nothing Personal, 1964. A collaborative book with James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
.
- Alice in Wonderland, 1973, co-authored with Doon Arbus
Doon Arbus, , daughter of actor Allan Arbus and the late photographer Diane Arbus, is a writer and journalist. Her sister, Amy Arbus, is a photojournalist...
.
- Portraits, 1976
- Portraits 1947-1977, 1978
- In the American West, 1985
- An Autobiography, 1993. Contains 50 years of images arranged to tell Avedon's life story. Photos include celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, Judy GarlandJudy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
, Andy WarholAndrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, and Avedon's parents.
- Evidence, 1994. More than 600 images encompassing Avedon's fashion photographs, portraiture, journalistic shots, sketches, snapshots, and contact sheets. However, despite containing many images, the book focuses more on the essays and text about Avedon instead of being fully based on visuals.
- The Sixties, 1999, co-authored with Doon Arbus. Contains images of many famous figures such as Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
, Jimi HendrixJames Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
, and TwiggyLesley Lawson née Hornby known as Twiggy is an English model, actress, and singer. In the early-1960s she became a prominent British teenage model of swinging sixties London with others such as Penelope Tree....
.
- Made in France, 2001. A retrospective of Avedon's fashion portraiture from the 1950s. The book is expensive due to the images being printed on tritone plates
Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size, in shape or in spacing...
.
- Richard Avedon Portraits 2002. 50 black and white images of celebrities and subjects from his In The American West project. Its release coincided with an exhibition of the work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
.
- Woman in the Mirror. 2005, with an essay by Anne Hollander.
- Performance. 2008, with an essay by John Lahr
John Lahr is an American theater critic, and the son of actor Bert Lahr. Since 1992, he has been the senior drama critic at The New Yorker magazine.-Biography:...
.
- Portraits of Power. 2008, edited by Paul Roth with an essay by Renata Adler
Renata Adler is an American author, journalist and film critic.-Background and education:Adler was born in Milan, Italy, and grew up in Danbury, Connecticut. After gaining a B.A. in philosophy and German from Bryn Mawr, Adler studied for an M.A. in Comparative Literature at Harvard under I. A...
. Coincides with an exhibition of political work at the Corcoran Gallery of ArtThe Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
in Washington DC.
External links