Richard Avedon

I’ve been thinking about portraiture. To make good portraits, I’ve learned, is difficult. It gives me hope, therefore, that Richard Avedon’s “American West” (1985), which I admire, took him six years of solid work to complete. Its 124 images were culled from 17,000 sheets of film and 752 subjects. That’s an average of eight images daily and a new subject every three days: a relentless schedule. Fortunately, Avedon was a relentless photographer.

Richard Avedon was born in New York in 1923. By age 22, he worked for Harper’s Bazaar, quickly becoming their lead photographer under Alexey Brodovitch. In 1965, he joined Vogue, and in 1992, became the first staff photographer at The New Yorker. Fashion was his bread and butter, but portraiture was his “deeper pleasure.” “I consider myself,” he said, “to be a portrait photographer.”

Avedon’s reputation is glamorous. He has photographed the world’s most beautiful women (see Dovima with Elephants below), its most famous politicians (like John F. Kennedy), and a host of showbiz celebrities (like Marilyn Monroe). He’s also photographed with a social conscience (see Major Claude Eatherly), as well as the ordinary man on the street (Billy Mudd in “American West”).

In 1993, Avedon, then aged 70 years, was interviewed by Charlie Rose. You can watch the interview here. Avedon is articulate. Here are some of his ideas:

A portrait is a three-way collaboration involving the photographer, subject, and viewer. The subject, knowing he is being photographed, performs for the camera. “We all perform,” says Avedon. The photographer, however, holds all the power. “I’m always limited and released by the subject. It’s a strange collaboration, but the control’s with the photographer, always.”
“All photographs are accurate; none of them is truth.” Expression is an opinion, not a fact. “A portrait is not a likeness…. All of these portraits [in “American West”] were fictional… I chose the face that expressed what I want.”
A portrait is a small part of a bigger whole. “An image can be a word; it can be a sentence; it can be possibly a paragraph, but it cannot be a chapter.”
“My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.” Photography is autobiographical, reflecting what the photographer sees and how he sees. If a photographer does this well, then his work is art.
“Is photography art?” asked Charlie Rose. Avedon’s opinion: “That’s such a bogus and nitwit thing to ask. Anything you do as an art is an art. Painting is not an art if it’s done by a shlub. Bad painting is not art. Bad writing is not the art of writing. And bad photography is not art…. Good photography – you bring it up to an art.”
Avedon admires Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn, and Diane Arbus. Like them, he “had a complete obsession with work…. If you do good work every single day, hopefully, the work gets better.”

Avedon’s career spanned almost six decades. He died while on assignment for The New Yorker in San Antonio, Texas, in 2004, aged 81 years. Six decades translates into many single days making photographs.

Message to self: Get out and do the work.

I’d often wondered why Avedon, in the self-portrait at top, photographed himself with foreshortened arms. I mean, it looks a little odd. And then, one day, my son was sweeping back his hair, and I saw the same expression. So I made an Avedon-inspred portrait of my son, which I love!