Richard Avedon

Photographer

• Born: May 15, 1923
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: October 1, 2004
• Place of death: San Antonio, Texas

Avedon revolutionized fashion photography in his work for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. His portraits of cultural and political leaders captured the spirit and the history of America in the second half of the twentieth century.

Early Life

Richard Avedon (A-veh-don) was born in 1923 to Russian Jewish parents in were chosen. His father, a successful businessman in the women’s wear trade, wanted his son to carry on the family business. Because he was not interested in the family business or in obtaining an education for business success, Avedon believed he was a disappointment to his parents. He loved reading and poetry, but he was not interested in academics. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and briefly attended Columbia University.

In 1941, Avedon joined the merchant marine as a photographer’s mate, second class. He believed that serving in the merchant marine might be safer than serving in the Army during World War II (1939-1945). He spent the next three years photographing sailors for identification cards: head shots, full face, with little expression and a neutral background.

Upon his separation from the service in 1944, he developed a portfolio of photographs and tenaciously pursued a meeting with Alexey Brodovitch, also a New York Russian Jew and the art director of Harper’s Bazaar. Brodovitch saw promise in Avedon’s work and recommended that Avedon attend Brodovitch’s classes at the New School for Social Research

Life’s Work

Soon hired by Brodovitch, Avedon photographed professionally for the next half century. His work spans genres, from fashion to documentary to portraits. He believed his documentary work to be his strong suit, although critics did not receive it well at first publication. Avedon called the portraits his serious work, and his fashion photography paid the bills.

Brodovitch sent Avedon to Paris to shoot the French couture collection of 1947. At the time, French couture was trying to reestablish itself after years of inactivity during the Nazi occupation. Avedon’s crisp technique and innovative, often dynamic photos captured the new verve. He gained fame quickly, becoming lead photographer at Harper’s Bazaar. (He was the inspiration for the romantic lead character, Dick Avery, in the 1957 motion picture Funny Face.) Renown brought freedom, freedom brought innovation, and innovation resulted in great fame for Avedon. He introduced the first nude model in 1961 and the first black model to Harper’s Bazaar. In 1966, he became lead photographer at Vogue.

Avedon yearned for a more serious reputation. Beginning in 1946, he and African American writer James Baldwin (a high school friend) collaborated on a documentary project for Life magazine called “Doorways.” Partway through the project, however, Avedon returned the magazine’s advance—a sizable twenty-five thousand dollars—because he believed the photos he took of Harlem were exploitative. Much later, in 1964, he and Baldwin reconnected for Nothing Personal, a book-length project of photos with a linking essay by Baldwin. It was a polemical work of cultural politics, focusing on social injustice; it was not well received by critics. Despite this disappointment, Avedon remained engaged in social activism throughout the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s.

Beginning in the mid-1950’s, Avedon produced a series of portrait photographs for Harper’s Bazaar, and his subjects included Marian Anderson, contralto, in 1955; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1957; and actorMarilyn Monroe in 1957. In the decades that followed, he photographed counterculture figures and the political elite. Collaborating with interviewer and essayist Doon Arbus, daughter of esteemed photographer Diane Arbus, Avedon captured in these portraits the turbulent history of America. He changed his working method to better engage with his sitters, sacrificing his hand-held Rolleiflex in 1969 for a tripod-steady Deardorff view camera that produced eight-by-ten-inch negatives. He placed sitters against an empty white ground to condense the visual confrontation between the sitter and the viewer. His portraits were received as art and exhibited in major museums. The first exhibition was in 1962; museum solo shows followed consistently from the 1970’s through the early twenty-first century. Many of these exhibitions were designed by his close friend and art director, Marvin Israel. In 1992, he was hired by Tina Brown to be the first staff photographer for The New Yorker. He died at the age of eighty-one of a cerebral hemorrhage in San Antonio, Texas, while on assignment for The New Yorker.

Significance

Avedon’s importance lies in two areas: photographic arts and American social history. His work was presented as an art form at galleries and at museums at a time when both criticism and art markets were debating the issue of photography as art. His work was central to the elevation of photography to an elite status. His portrait photos captured the identity of America in the second half of the twentieth century. His uncanny knack for capturing cultural moments (whether the Chicago Seven during their trial for disrupting the 1968 Democratic Convention or Bob Dylan on the eve of his success) gives his photos a historical significance unmatched since Matthew Brady’s record of the Civil War a hundred years earlier. Though many critics believed Avedon when he declared that his photographs were innocent of political intent, his sympathy with counterculture figures and his liberal opinions on politics are apparent.

Bibliography

Avedon, Richard. An Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1993. Consisting mainly of photographs with only two pages of text by Avedon, this primary source is nonetheless insightful.

Avedon, Richard, Maria Morris Hambourg, and Mia Fineman. Richard Avedon Portraits. New York: Harry N. Abrams and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002. Finely printed accordion book replicates the format and scale of the photos as exhibited. Includes a biography and a comprehensive study of Avedon’s cultural sources.

Blair, Sara. “Photo-Text Capital: James Baldwin, Richard Avedon, and the Uses of Harlem.” In Harlem Crossroads: Black Writers and the Photograph in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. Study of Baldwin and Avdeon’s collaboration, which culminated in Nothing Personal (1964).

Danto, Arthur C. “Richard Avedon.” In The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Critique that discusses fashion photography and portraits.

Goldberg, Vicki. “Richard Avedon.” In Light Matters: Writings on Photography. New York: Aperture, 2005. An accessible overview of Avedon’s life and work.

Goodyear, Frank, and Paul Roth. Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power. Introduction by Renata Adler. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2008. Essays address Avedon’s engagement in politics. Roth offers detailed and original research on the period 1969-1976. Lengthy bibliography.

Holm, Michael Juul, ed. Richard Avedon: Photographs, 1946-2004. Humblebaek, Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2007. An exhibition of the full range of Avedon’s output—fashion, portrait, and documentation photography. Includes a biographical essay by Helle Crenzien and a chronology of Avedon’s career.