Yet many more people, knowingly or not, would have seen Avedon’s advertising work before his personal or editorial photography. On his death in 2004 at the age of 81, The New York Times published an obituary that said of the New York-born photographer: “His fashion and portrait photographs helped define America’s image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century.” He proceeded to become the magazine’s lead photographer later that decade, shooting most of the magazine’s covers from 1973 until Anna Wintour became Editor-in-Chief in late 1988. When Diana Vreeland left the rival fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar for Vogue in 1962, Avedon joined her as a staff photographer.
The adverts are records of the world we live in, and it’s possible the record of my ads over the past 20 years could be a more valuable social document than a record of what I think of as my finest fashion photographs.”Īvedon will perhaps always be known primarily for his association with Vogue. American photographer Richard Avedon was best known for his work in the fashion world and for his minimalist, large-scale character-revealing portraits. He wanted to be talked of purely as an artist.īut in 1965, Avedon was quoted as saying: “I think that my creative work in advertising is the hardest, most honest work I do. He rarely spoke of it and was sensitive to accusations that he was merely a commercial photographer. Richard Avedon was notoriously touchy about his advertising work. His work is a vital part of the canon of the history of photography, and his donations of his work to the Smithsonian Institution have created a significant legacy of some of his most important images, including those in this book.Andy Warhol, André Gregory, Vincent Vallarino and Kelly LeBrock for Dior, 1982 In a career spanning six decades, he turned fashion photography into an art form and reinvented the genre of photographic portraiture. Richard Avedon chronicled the latter half of the twentieth century with powerful portraits of artists, intellectuals, political figures, and events of the time. His work is a vital part of the canon of the history of photography, and his donations of his work to the Smithsonian Institution have created a significant legacy of some of his most important images.
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