Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American photographer known for fashion and portraiture. His work appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Elle, and he had a particular talent for making still images of fashion, theater, and dance feel full of motion. A New York Times obituary noted that his photographs "helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."

Avedon grew up in New York City in a Jewish family. His father, Jacob Israel Avedon, had emigrated from Russia and worked his way up from menial jobs to owning a successful dress shop on Fifth Avenue. His mother, Anna, came from a family that ran a dress-manufacturing business, and she encouraged his interest in fashion and art. Photography caught his attention at age twelve when he joined a YMHA Camera Club. Using the family's Kodak Box Brownie, he explored the world and also found an escape from his personal life; his father was a critical, distant disciplinarian who believed life required physical strength, education, and money. Later in life, Avedon identified his younger sister, Louise, as his first muse. According to Norma Stevens, his studio director for 28 years, Avedon said, "Louise was the forerunner—the blueprint, the ghost behind so many of my subjects." During her teenage years, Louise underwent psychiatric treatment and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, becoming increasingly withdrawn. These early experiences with fashion and family shaped his career, often showing up in his desire to capture a sense of tragic beauty.

He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where from 1937 to 1941 he worked on the school's literary magazine, The Magpie, alongside James Baldwin. As a teenager, he also won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award. In the spring of his senior year, 1941, he learned he hadn't passed enough courses to graduate and would have to repeat the year. After leaving DeWitt Clinton, he took a philosophy course at Columbia University's School of General Studies. In 1942, he enlisted in the United States Maritime Service (the Merchant Marines). There, he became a staff photographer, using a Rolleiflex camera his father had given him to take ID photos of crew members.

After leaving the Merchant Marines in 1944, Avedon started out as an advertising photographer for a department store, but his real goal was to work for Harper's Bazaar. After several tries, he got a meeting with the magazine's art director, Alexey Brodovitch. Brodovitch and editor-in-chief Carmel Snow looked at his portfolio and hired him immediately. Brodovitch also signed him up for a photography class at his Design Laboratory at The New School for Social Research. Avedon's first published work appeared in the October 1944 issue, in the Junior Bazaar section aimed at younger readers. The following month, his photos moved into the main editorial section.

In 1946, he opened his own studio and started supplying images to magazines like Vogue and Life. He became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar. From 1950, he also contributed to Look and Graphis. In 1952, he took a role as staff editor and photographer for Theatre Arts Magazine. By the late 1950s, he grew tired of shooting in daylight and outdoor locations, so he shifted to studio work using strobe lighting.

When Diana Vreeland moved from Harper's Bazaar to Vogue in 1962, Avedon—who admired her—joined her there as a staff photographer in 1965. He eventually became Vogue's lead photographer, shooting most of its covers from 1973 until Anna Wintour took over as editor in chief in late 1988.

Among his fashion advertising work were recurring campaigns for Gianni Versace, starting with the spring/summer 1980 collection. He also shot the Calvin Klein Jeans campaign featuring a fifteen-year-old Brooke Shields and directed her in the accompanying TV commercials. He had first worked with Shields in 1974 on a Colgate toothpaste ad, and later photographed her for Versace, twelve American Vogue covers, and Revlon's Most Unforgettable Women campaign. In a February 9, 1981, Newsweek article, Avedon said of Shields, "Brooke is a lightning rod. She focuses the inarticulate rage people feel about the decline in contemporary morality and destruction of innocence in the world." Shields told Interview magazine in May 1992, "When Dick walks into the room, a lot of people are intimidated. But when he works, he's so acutely creative, so sensitive. And he doesn't like it if anyone else is around or speaking. There is a mutual vulnerability, and a moment of fusion when he clicks the shutter. You either get it or you don't."

Alongside his fashion work, by the 1960s Avedon was making studio portraits of civil rights workers, politicians, and cultural dissidents in a divided and violent America. He expanded into photographing patients in mental hospitals, the Civil Rights Movement in 1963, Vietnam War protesters, and later the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1964, he published a personal book called *Nothing Personal*, with text by his high school classmate James Baldwin. It includes photos documenting the civil rights movement, cultural figures, and an extended series of people in a mental asylum; paired with Baldwin's sharp writing, it offers a striking commentary on America in 1964. During this period, Avedon also created two well-known sets of portraits of The Beatles.