Heralded as the fashion photographer of the era, Richard Avedon was an American portraitist who captured movement and the intimate and surprising side of celebrities and politicians alike. In an early Nineties interview with journalist Charlie Rose, Avedon counted photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn, and Diane Arbus as his references for their “complete obsession with work. Work and work every single day; it hopefully gets better. At the end of your life, you have a body of work. Documenting a time in our history.” Currently, the exhibition Richard Avedon Relationships is on view in Sicily, at the Galleria D’Arte Moderna in Palermo until July 30, focusing on his fashion photography and including his renowned photos of Marella Agnelli and Nastassja Kinski with a snake, among others. Meanwhile, Avedon 100, an exhibition at the Gagosian, New York, celebrated the centenary of the photographer’s birth. A book of the same name has recently been published, featuring his famed works.
Veruschka, dress by Bill Blass, New York, 1967
Avedon considered his visual sense a “lucky break.” His father was a teacher and wanted his nine-year-old son to understand what a negative was. Born in 1923, in New York City, his father owned a women’s specialty shop on Fifth Avenue, while his mother’s family owned a dress manufacturing business. Teams from Vogue and Vanity Fair were in his father’s boutique every month. He would tear pages of fashion pictures and tape them to his wall, surrounding himself with some of the best photography of the Thirties. At 12, he joined a camera club, and in 1943, he joined the armed forces during the Second World War, serving as Photographer’s Mate Second Class in the US Merchant Marine. As a student, he wanted to be a writer and was the poet laureate of New York City. “I realized at 18 that I have to learn what I learn obliquely. Nothing I’ve ever done has been calculated. I follow my instincts.”…
