Artist Study Info: Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon was a fashion photographer for over 60 years, from the States, that was quoted as saying “My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.” He was born on May 15^th, 1923 in New York and started working for Vogue in 1964, working there until 1988. He did a great deal of fashion photography but is also known for his series work photographing Western drifters, cowboys, miners and people that weren’t living in main stream society. He died in Texas while on assignment on October 1, 2004 when he was 81 years old of a brain hemmorage. His work is displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Art Institute of Chicago, and overseas in Switzerland and London.

Mr. Avedon loved photography from a very young age and joined a camera club when he was 12. He went to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and was a co-editor of a magazine at the school. Because of his work during these years, he earned the title of Poet Laureate of New York City High Schools in 1941. A year later he joined the armed forces and became a photographer with the U.S Merchant Marine during WWII where he was tasked with taking identity photographs. He did that for two years before leaving to become a professional photographer at the New School for Social Research.

When he was 22, he started doing freelance work and took to the streets to shoot models and fashion because he didn’t have access to a studio. He went to nightclubs, the circus, the beach and anywhere else unusual he could think to get pictures of people in an innovative and resourceful way.  This became his trademark. For his entire career he did formal portraits for Theatre Arts, Life, Look and Harper’s Bazaar magazines and loved showing peoples personality in their images he captured. A cool fact was that he quit working at Bazaaar magazine because people gave him grief for photographing models of color. That’s when he joined Vogue and worked there for 20 years. He was talented and many famous labels used him for their brand work and created some terrific campaigns for Calvin Klein, Revlon, Versace and more.

Some of my favorite pictures he took were “Napalm victim, Saigon, South Vietnam, April 1971”; “Bob Dylan, singer, New York City, Feb 10, 1965”; “Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955”; and “Kate Moss and Aya Thorgren, Versace Spring/Summer 1993 campaign, New York, November 12, 1992.”  All of these images are very unique and different, and all really make the person looking at the pictures think of a story that goes along with the image.  Although he’s known for his fashion photography, a special gift of his was his ‘minimalist’ portraits, and that’s what most of these ones are.

To take pictures over his 60 year career, his equipment understandably evolved, but the two main formats he used was a medium format camera that created 6x6cm negatives and later he used a large format 8x10 Deardorff camera that created 8x10 inch negatives.  When he took pictures of Twiggy, the British modeling sensation, at the age of 17, he was using a Rolleiflex camera and captured some of the best pictures of her alive in the moment.

His legacy lives on and is still known as an influential fashion photographer. Many people try to imitate his style and because of him, generations of models have been shot using the most unusual backdrops and busy places. He just had a natural flair for capturing his subjects and was passionate about expressing that. Although he was always bouncing and jumping around full of energy, he was also sad inside.  Some think that was because he lost his sister at the age of 42 who suffered from mental illness. His photography was a performance, and once he was done, he could revert back to being his subdued (and sometimes sad) self. Although much of his photography was appreciated, hailed and emulated, some of it was criticized.  Most would say that was because people were jealous and envious of him, his success and his body of work.