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My Journey ends here...

AVEDON Richard

Date of birth : May 15, 1923, New York City.

Date of death : October 1, 2004, San Antonio,Texas.

Portrait :

Story

Son of Russian immigrants.
He studied at the Columbia University, New York, then he devoted himself to photography, self-teaching.

In 1944, he met Alexei Brodovitch, the famous art director of Harper's Bazaar magazine, with who he worked for several years.

In 1959, the publication of his book "Observations" had an important effect. Brodovitch had done the page setting and Truman Capote had written the text. The work mainly contained personalities portraits and a few fashion pictures. The complete lack of deference of this photographer portraits which, on white background, made the beings closeness flood in, for the first time payed the public and the art members attention.
His fashion pictures, in which he commuted his personal view of a pictures living world, close to life, provided him a big publicity. In fact, he broke up with the studio photography by leading his models in the streets of Paris, in the bars and follies.
The Avedon fashion photography, which through the years decreased more and more and in the 70's came close to the portrait photography, and became a reference for a whole photographers generation.
Few time later, he raised the roof because of the cycle of the slow agony of his father, Jacob Israel Avedon.
In this cycle, which is also a document about his relationship with his father, he ripped him off some comical expressions and looks he had seen during his youth and which had impregnated his own image of the father figure. But it's also a shattering cycle about the slow deterioration of a strong personality and about its own retirement.

With his book "In the American West", he wanted to break the West American myth, the one of the smooth and idyllic world of the cow-boys, and show another aspect, the one of the day laborers and diggers, the unemployed and underemployed, the White men, the Black men and the South-Americans. The pathetic image he gave of the West America caused indignation and was sensed as pernicious.
Followed, a cycle about the Louisiana State Hospital, a succession of images of mentally ill people, and also another about the napalm victims, bitter indictment against the Vietnam war.
Those are the only ones, among Avendon pictures, to show violence: he had always refused to do that, considering that violent images produced, in their turn, violence.

His big sizes on cloth impressed a lot in the photography history. Among others, there were portraits of members from de "Warhol Factory", the "Chicago Seven", the "Ginsberg Family" and the "Mission Council".

Among his portraits, "The Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution" of 1963 occupied a specific place.

Avedon had made a group portrait created in a strange way. This picture, which was obviously the preliminary study of an official group portrait, fascinated with its strange composition and with the variety of the relationships the personages, even if they were secluded, maintained to each other.

Equally strange was the Charlie Chaplin portrait where he imitated the devil().

His execution fulfilled Chaplin's own desire who wanted to express his combative inclination when he was forced to leave America because of his political engagement.

Ezra Pound portrait, absorbed in himself in a nearly painful focus () was the masterpiece of a cylce in which the writer, in front of the camera, revelead, at the same time that he translated it with gesture, the whole amplitude of his sensations and feelings.

The Berlin wall fall was for Avedon the opportunity to take pictures of the crowd in jubilation during the ew Year's Eve 1989. In this images palette, matched in the "Brandenburg Gate" cycle, the faces expressions ranged from the excessive joviality to the anguished apprehension of the future. In terms of symbol, Avedon set on the place of the reporting a small selection of constellations which, réduced to the outline of a bald head, peaked in the night sky.

Then he took pictures of the Italian aristocracy in which he used, for the first time, and in a rather large part, the photomontage opportunities.
It was during his retrospective in 1994 that we remembered that photoreporting was also a style he had practised at his beginning.

Avedon is considered as one of the best photographers. Only in New York, some exhibitions had been devoted to him at the Museum of Modern Art, at the Metropolitan Museum and at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In 1994, The Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, presented a big retrospective and also his fashion photographer production.

Other pictures :

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He would marry and divorce Evelyn Franklin (), first his childhood lover then Milton Greene's wife, until 1949.

Link with Marilyn :

In September 1954, photo session for Harper's Bazaar magazine, during the shooting of "The Seven Year Itch" :

with Richard Avedon :

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with Billy Wilder

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other

On May 6, 1957, he took some publicity pictures for "The Prince and the Showgirl" (1957) with Marilyn, in New York City.

With a stuffed tiger :

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Sequin dress :

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Sequin dress and stud earrings :

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Sofa :

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Telegrams sent to Marilyn :

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Fall 1958, he made a serie of Marilyn interpreting the biggest sex-symbols of the 20th century.

Pictures of Marilyn as Marlene Dietrich :

as Lilian Russell

as Theda Bara

as Jean Harlow

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and as Clara Bow

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The pictures appeared in the article "The Fable Enchantress" published in Life magazine, December 22, 1958.

Arthur Miller, Marilyn's husband at that time, had written the article which went with the pictures, "My Wife, Marilyn" :

Other pictures of the session :

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Avedon found easy to work with her : "She gave more to the camera than every other actress - every other woman - I had the opportunity to photography; much more patient, more demanding with herself and more comfortable in front of the camera than out of the work sessions".

In 1958, he took some publicity pictures of Marilyn for "Some Like It Hot" :

sequined dress

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