Richard Avedon fought against the transience of the moment with his pictures. The American photographer is one of the most important representatives of his art and saw it as his task to make people and events, both small and great, visible, and to preserve them for posterity.
(...) Continue readingRichard Avedon – Encouragement from Alexy Brodovitch and Lilian Bassmann
Richard Avedon was born in New York City on 15 May 1923. The son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, his artistic tendency developed early on and at the age of 14 he tried his hand as a writer together with James Baldwin, who later achieved great fame in this field. Richard Avedon, on the other hand, turned to photography, and after finishing military service, began studying with the graphic designer Alexy Brodovitch (also of Russian descent) at his Design Laboratory at the New School for Social Research in New York. His first assignment as a photographer came from Lilian Bassmann, the artistic director of Junior Bazaar magazine. In 1946, Avedon founded his own studio and his pictures appeared in renowned magazines such as Life, Vogue and above all Harper’s Bazaar, where he rose to chief photographer. In 1962, he followed Diana Vreeland to Vogue.
Richard Avedon’s portraits showed soul and personality
From the start, Richard Avedon’s working methods were markedly different to his colleagues’. He was not content to photograph his models in static poses in the studio; he wanted emotion and movement. The people in his pictures smiled and laughed; he created outdoor photographs that captured physical activity without strict composition or sophisticated staging. This was a revolution for fashion photography of that time. Avedon’s pictures reveal much about the sitter, they reveal their inner life, and do not conceal weaknesses and insecurities. Despite or because of this vulnerability and humanity, ever more celebrities were interested in being photographed by Richard Avedon: As well as Ezra Pound, Brigitte Bardot, Charlie Chaplin, John Ford, Igor Stravinsky and other greats of the cultural scene, even politicians such as Henry Kissinger dared to stand in front of Avedon’s camera – the latter not without the express request that the photographer should be merciful. Avedon’s most famous model, however, is neither superstar or politician, but his own father, whose slow death the photographer documented in relentlessly candid and sometimes brutal-seeming pictures.
Disturbing pictures of the forgotten and unseen
Richard Avedon was by no means only the photographer of the rich and beautiful, the glamourous world of advertising and fashion: During the Vietnam war, he photographed Vietnamese child victims of napalm attacks, he photographed mentally ill people in hospitals, and he accompanied the civil rights movement in the southern states of America during its peak in the 1960s. Miners, circus artists and people living on the fringe of society suddenly became visible through Avedon’s photographs. In 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, Richard Avedon photographed the people celebrating at the Brandenburg Gate on New Year’s Eve for his series, Brandenburg Gate. Richard Avedon received prizes and awards for his art and significantly influenced the development of portrait photography; the world-famous portrait photographer, Annie Leibowitz, described him as one of her most important role models. His highly acclaimed book Evidence: 1944-1994 was honoured with the French photography prize, the Priz Nadar.
Richard Avedon died in San Antonio, Texas, on 1 October 2004.
Richard Avedon - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz: