Biography of Richard Avedon

Eye on the goal

15 May 1923 1 October 2004 Famous photographer known worldwide for its very elaborate pictures, Richard Avedon was born on May 15, 1923 in New York. Dissolute and always looking for strong emotions, he abandoned his studies in 1942, boring, to enlist as photographer in the Navy where he was able to go around the world and to make various experiences in the most difficult situations. Deeply impressed by the photos of the famous Mukancsi, on his return to America is being done to hone her technical skills. After the harsh but fruitful apprenticeship of the army, at the end of World War II he became a professional photographer. His first professional step: salt finally manages to become help photographer in private practice and then collaborate for a magazine, "The Elm". In the years ' 40 following a course at the New School for Social Research taught by Alexy Brodovitch, editor of Harper's Bazaar. It then became part of the stable group of Bazaar, thanks to the admiration that Brodovitch developed for him. The latter is definitely a prominent figure for the photographer, as can be seen, among other things, flipping through the first commercial book Avedon "Observation" (a volume in which linked images to comment by Truman Capote), published in 1959 and dedicated to his never forgotten Pygmalion. In 1961 Richard Avedon became artistic director of Bazaar. Marvin Israel is another important figure for him in the realization of the second book, "Nothing Personal" (his photographs with text by James Baldwin), published in 1963 after touring the southern States: there emerges the focus on civil rights and political and ethical stance, with a tendency to structure every job as if it were a story. From the encounter with literature, fruitful and lasting, would have also resulted in the book "Portraits Photographs" with an introduction by Harold Rosenberg. The November 22, 1963 performs in Times Square a series of photos to people who show the newspaper that talks about the Kennedy assassination. In 1965 changes from Bazaar to Vogue. In the early ' 70, with Arbus, publishes a book about "Alice in Wonderland", in which, as in a work of the studio of Andy Warhol, photographs have a theatrical aspect to sequencing and gestures designed characters photographed. From 1979 to 1985 performs numerous portraits of vagabonds and misfits in the American West that are called offensive to the inhabitants of those regions. On new year's Eve 1989 Avedon went to Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate during the fall of the wall, showing once again that his work is not only aimed at fashion-why is justifiably famous--but it represents a sensitive instrument to understand political changes, psychological or philosophical implications. Although it must be emphasized that what is photography, Avedon intellectual, has always stressed the role of processing that takes place on do the same of photography, a place that never represents the "truth". His own photographs are an admirable result of thought and processing and almost never rely on the case. One of his most famous photographs, "Dovima," for example, portrays a model wearing a Dior evening gown in a pose extremely unnatural between two elephants: was taken in Paris in 1955 and represents the pinnacle of artifice. His other famous works are his portraits of artists and celebrities, but also the series taken to ordinary people in a psychiatric hospital. His artistic greatness was celebrated in a beautiful exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. 81 still in business, while he was making a photoshoot ahead of presidential elections on behalf of the New Yorker, Richard Avedon suffered a stroke and, two days later, October 1, 2004-just two months after the death of another great master, Henri Cartier-Bresson-died in a hospital in San Antonio, Texas.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.