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Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon 2004.jpg
Avedon in 2004
Born (1923-05-15)May 15, 1923
New York City, U.S.
Died October 1, 2004(2004-10-01) (aged 81)
San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
Alma mater The New School for Social Research
Spouse(s)
Doe Avedon
​
​
(m. 1944; div. 1949)​

Evelyn Franklin
​
(m. 1951)​

Richard Avedon (born May 15, 1923 – died October 1, 2004) was a famous American photographer. He was known for his fashion and portrait photos. Avedon worked for top magazines like Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Elle. He was especially good at showing movement in his fashion, theater, and dance pictures. The New York Times said his photos helped define American style and beauty for 50 years.

Early Life and Learning

Richard Avedon was born in New York City. His family was Jewish. His father, Jacob Israel Avedon, came from Russia. He started a successful clothing business on Fifth Avenue. Richard's mother, Anna, loved fashion and art. She encouraged Richard's interest in these areas.

Avedon became interested in photography when he was 12. He joined a camera club at the Young Men's Hebrew Association. He used his family's Kodak Box Brownie camera. This helped him explore the world and also escape from his home life. His father was strict and distant. He believed in physical strength, education, and money for life.

Richard's younger sister, Louise, was his first model. As a teenager, she faced health challenges. These early experiences with fashion and family shaped Avedon's life. They often influenced his desire to capture beauty in his photos.

Avedon went to DeWitt Clinton High School in Bedford Park, Bronx. From 1937 to 1940, he worked on the school paper, The Magpie. He worked with writer James Baldwin. As a teen, he also won an art and writing award. After high school, he studied philosophy at Columbia University but left after a year.

He then became a photographer for the Merchant Marines. He took ID photos of the crew. His father had given him a Rolleiflex camera. From 1944 to 1950, Avedon studied photography. He learned from Alexey Brodovitch at The New School for Social Research.

Photography Career

In 1944, Avedon started as an advertising photographer. He worked for a department store. Soon, Alexey Brodovitch, art director for Harper's Bazaar, supported his work. Lillian Bassman also helped Avedon's career at Harper's. By 1945, his photos appeared in Junior Bazaar. A year later, they were in Harper's Bazaar.

By 1946, Avedon had his own studio. He started taking pictures for magazines like Vogue and Life. He became the main photographer for Harper's Bazaar. From 1950, he also contributed to Look and Graphis. In 1952, he became a staff editor and photographer for Theatre Arts Magazine. Later in the 1950s, he preferred studio photography. He started using strobe lighting instead of daylight.

When Diana Vreeland moved from Harper's Bazaar to Vogue in 1962, Avedon joined her. He became the lead photographer at Vogue. He photographed most of the covers from 1973 until Anna Wintour became editor in 1988.

Avedon also worked on many fashion ads. He had regular assignments for Gianni Versace starting in 1980. He photographed the Calvin Klein Jeans campaign with a young Brooke Shields. He also directed her TV commercials. Avedon first worked with Shields in 1974 for a toothpaste ad. He photographed her for Versace, 12 American Vogue covers, and Revlon's Most Unforgettable Women campaign.

Brooke Shields once said about working with Avedon: "When Dick walks into the room, a lot of people are intimidated. But when he works, he's so acutely creative, so sensitive. There is a mutual vulnerability, and a moment of fusion when he clicks the shutter."

Besides fashion, Avedon began taking portraits of important people in the 1960s. He photographed civil rights workers and politicians. He also captured people affected by social changes in America. He photographed patients in hospitals and people involved in the Civil Rights Movement in 1963. He also photographed protesters of the Vietnam War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 1964, Avedon released a book called Nothing Personal. It had text by his high school friend James Baldwin. The book included photos of the civil rights movement and cultural figures. It also had pictures of people in a mental asylum. Together with Baldwin's powerful words, it showed a strong view of America in 1964.

During this time, Avedon also took two famous sets of photos of The Beatles. The first set, from 1967, included four colorful individual portraits. It also had a black-and-white group photo. The next year, he took more simple portraits. These were included with The Beatles album in 1968. In 1973, he photographed Electric Light Orchestra.

Avedon was always interested in showing the personality of his subjects. As he became more famous, he photographed many public figures. He used a large camera in his studio. His subjects included Buster Keaton, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, and the Chicago Seven.

Avedon focused on the inner feelings of his subjects. He did this by removing soft lights and props. Sometimes, he would ask questions to get strong reactions from people. This helped him capture parts of their character that others might miss.

Avedon created large photo groupings of important figures. These included Andy Warhol and his group, The Chicago Seven (political activists from 1968), and the poet Allen Ginsberg and his family. He also photographed the Mission Council, a group of officials involved in the Vietnam War.

In 1982, Avedon made fun and creative ads for Christian Dior. They looked like movie scenes. They showed a fictional "Dior family" wearing elegant clothes.

Avedon became the first staff photographer for The New Yorker in 1992. In 1995, the magazine published his fashion story “In Memory of the Late Mr. and Mrs. Comfort.” It featured model Nadja Auermann and a skeleton. Other photos for the magazine were also widely discussed. These included unseen photos of Marilyn Monroe and a powerful picture of Christopher Reeve in his wheelchair.

In the American West

AvedonInTheAmericanWest
The cover of Avedon's book In the American West (1985)

In 1974, Avedon faced serious heart problems. This difficult time inspired him to create a new collection of photos. In 1979, he was asked by Mitchell A. Wilder to work on the “Western Project.” Wilder was the director of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Wilder wanted Avedon to show his view of the American West. This project changed Avedon's career. He focused on everyday working people like miners, housewives, farmers, and drifters. He made large prints of them. This was different from his usual focus on famous people. The project lasted five years. It ended with an exhibition and a book. Avedon and his team photographed 762 people. They used about 17,000 sheets of film. Avedon said this project helped him connect with his subjects. He felt this connection was due to his own health issues and aging. He visited rodeos, carnivals, coal mines, oil fields, and prisons to find people to photograph.

In 1994, Avedon met some of his subjects again. They talked about how In the American West affected them. Billy Mudd, a truck driver, was often away from his family. He felt sad and alone. When he saw his portrait, he realized Avedon had shown something deep about him. This made him want to change his life. The portrait helped Mudd quit his job and return to his family.

Helen Whitney's 1996 documentary, Avedon: Darkness and Light, showed Avedon identifying In the American West as his best work.

During the project, Avedon had trouble finding large, good-quality printing paper. He tried different methods. He finally chose Portriga Rapid paper. Each print needed a lot of careful work. It took about nine months to print everything.

While In the American West is famous, some people criticized it. They wondered why a photographer known for fashion would photograph working-class people in the West. Some argued that Avedon wanted viewers to feel pity for his subjects.

Exhibitions

Avedon's work was shown in many museums around the world. His first big show was at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1970.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City had two solo shows of his work. These were in 1978 and 2002. In 1980, a show was organized by the University Art Museum in Berkeley. Major shows were also held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1994). Another was at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2007). This show traveled to other cities until 2009.

In 2009, the International Center of Photography showed his fashion work. It included his early photos from 1944 to his later portraits in 2000. Also in 2009, the Corcoran Gallery of Art showed Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power. This exhibition brought together his political portraits for the first time.

Collections

Avedon's work is kept in these permanent collections:

Awards

  • 1989: Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America
  • 1989: Honorary degree from the Royal College of Art
  • 1991: Hasselblad Award
  • 1993: Honorary degree from Kenyon College
  • 1993: International Center of Photography's Master of Photography Award
  • 1994: Honorary degree from the Parsons School of Design
  • 1994: Prix Nadar for his book Evidence (1994)
  • 2001: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • 2003: Kitty Carlisle Hart Award, Arts & Business Council, New York
  • 2003: Royal Photographic Society 150th Anniversary Medal
  • 2003: National Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement
  • 2003: The Royal Photographic Society's Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship
  • 2017: International Photography Hall of Fame, St. Louis

Art Market

In 2010, a photograph by Avedon sold for a record price. It was a seven-foot-high print of model Dovima. She was posing in a Christian Dior dress with elephants in Paris in 1955. This print sold for £719,000 at Christie's. It was the largest print of this image. Avedon made it in 1978 for his fashion show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maison Christian Dior bought the print.

Personal Life

In 1944, Avedon married Dorcas Marie Nowell. She later became the model and actress Doe Avedon. They divorced in 1949 and did not have children.

In 1951, he married Evelyn Franklin. She passed away on March 13, 2004. They had one son, John Avedon, who has written about Tibet.

In 1970, Avedon bought a building in Upper East Side of Manhattan. It became both his studio and home. In the late 1970s, he bought a house in Montauk, New York. He sold it for almost $9 million in 2000.

Death

Richard Avedon passed away on October 1, 2004. He died in a San Antonio, Texas, hospital due to health problems. He was in San Antonio working on a project for The New Yorker. At the time of his death, he was also working on a new project called Democracy. This project was about the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

Legacy

The Richard Avedon Foundation was set up by Avedon during his lifetime. It began its work shortly after his death in 2004. Based in New York, the foundation keeps Avedon's photographs, negatives, books, and other materials. In 2006, Avedon's personal collection was shown at galleries. It was later sold to help the Avedon Foundation. The collection included photos by Martin Munkacsi, Edward Steichen, and Man Ray. A book called Eye of the Beholder showed many of these photos.

Noted Photographs

Books by Richard Avedon

  • Observations. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959. Photos by Avedon, words by Truman Capote.
  • Nothing Personal. New York: Atheneum: 1964. A book with James Baldwin.
  • Alice in Wonderland: The Forming of a Company and the Making of a Play. Merlin: 1973. By Avedon and Doon Arbus.
  • Portraits. Noonday: 1976. Introduction by Harold Rosenberg.
  • Portraits 1947–1977. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978.
  • In the American West.
    • In the American West, Photographs by Richard Avedon. New York: Abrams, 1985. With an introduction by Laura Wilson.
    • In the American West, 1979–1984. New York: Abrams, 1985.
    • In the American West: 20th Anniversary Edition. New York: Abrams, 2005.
  • An Autobiography. 1993. Photos arranged to tell Avedon's life story.
  • Evidence. 1994. Essays and text about Avedon with his photos.
  • The Sixties. 1999. By Avedon and Doon Arbus. Photos of famous people.
  • Made in France, 2001. A look back at Avedon's fashion portraits from the 1950s.
  • Richard Avedon Portraits' 2002. Celebrities and subjects from In The American West.
  • Woman in the Mirror. 2005. With an essay by Anne Hollander.
  • Performance. 2008. With an essay by John Lahr.
  • Portraits of Power. 2008. Edited by Paul Roth. With an essay by Renata Adler.

See Also

  • Michael Avedon

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