Richard avedon photography biography
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Richard Avedon is one of the most important photographers of the second half of the twentieth century. During a career that spanned 60 years, his portrait and fashion work defined the medium of photography. More than any other photographer he successfully worked to erase the distinction between photography and fine art, with early solo museum shows at The Smithsonian () and the Minneapolis Institute of Fine Art (). In , he became the first living photographer to be awarded a solo show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had a second retrospective show there in
Born in New York City in , Richard Avedon dropped out of DeWitt Clinton High School and joined the Merchant Marine during World War II. Upon discharge in , he immediately found work at several magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar, which published his earliest fashion and portrait work beginning in November of that year.
Throughout his life, Avedon maintained a unique style of portrai
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Richard Avedon
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Who Was Richard Avedon?
American photographer Richard Avedon was best known for his work in the fashion world and for his minimalist portraits. He worked first as a photographer for the Merchant Marines, taking identification photos. He then moved to fashion, shooting for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, demanding that his models convey emotion and movement, a departure from the norm of motionless fashion photography.
Early Life
Avedon was born on May 15, in New York City. His mother, Anna Avedon, came from a family of dress manufacturers, and his father, Jacob Israel Avedon, owned a clothing store called Avedon's Fifth Avenue. Inspired by his parents' clothing businesses, as a boy, Avedon took a great interest in fashion, especially enjoying photographing the clothes in his father's store. At the age of 12, he joined the YMHA (Young Men's Hebrew Association) Camera Club.
Avedon later described one childhood moment in particular as helping to kindle his int
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Summary of Richard Avedon
In a gesture of supreme, youthful confidence, Richard Avedon did away with the standard trope of statue-like, frozen-in-time models of conventional mode photography. Instead the livlig young photographer who legendarily never stood still, enlivened his models and, most importantly, showed their human side, flaws and all. He fryst vatten probably best known, however, for his arresting, black-and-white and often large-format portraits of people, whether celebrities or unknowns, which are as much psychological studies as physical ones. Ranging between the commercial work he did as a fashion photographer and the ground-breaking fine art portraiture, the breadth and creativity of Avedon's body of work has made him one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. His photographs, claimed the New York Times, "helped define America's image of style and beauty and culture" since the s. While he didn't design the clothes that Veruschka or Twiggy or Brook