Richard Avedon (1923 to 2004) was an American photographer who worked in New York for about sixty years, first for Harper’s Bazaar, then for Vogue, and from 1992 as the first staff photographer at The New Yorker. He made fashion pictures full of movement and portraits stripped of everything except the person. He is known for the plain white background, against which he photographed film stars, presidents, artists and the working people of the American West.
Avedon trained under Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, at Brodovitch’s Design Laboratory at the New School for Social Research. Brodovitch’s other students included Irving Penn and Diane Arbus. One of his own photographs, made in Paris in 1957, is titled as a homage to Martin Munkacsi, and prints by Munkacsi were in the collection Avedon kept. His early fashion work turned away from the still, posed studio picture. His later portraits turned away from his own early work.
From identity photographs to the Paris collections
Avedon was born in New York City on May 15, 1923. His father ran a dress business on Fifth Avenue. He joined a camera club at twelve, and at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx he edited the literary magazine with the writer James Baldwin.
In 1942 he joined the Merchant Marine and spent two years in its photographic section, mostly making identity photographs of sailors with a Rolleiflex his father had given him. After his discharge in 1944 he worked as a photographer for a department store, then met Brodovitch and began to work for Harper’s Bazaar. His first pictures there ran in the Junior Bazaar section.
For Harper’s Bazaar he took fashion out of the studio. He photographed models in the street, at cafes, beside street performers and at the circus. The best known result is Dovima with Elephants, made at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris in August 1955. The 1957 film Funny Face, in which Fred Astaire plays a fashion photographer named Dick Avery, was based on his early career, and Avedon supplied the still photographs seen in it.
Curious what goes into a fashion picture besides the photographer? How a fashion photo shoot happens follows a shoot from plan to final frames, and fashion photography: techniques and creative direction covers the craft.
The move indoors and the white background
By the late 1950s Avedon had given up daylight and locations for the studio and electronic flash. Soft lighting and props went too. For portraits of public figures he took up an 8×10 view camera, and he worked in black and white.
The portraits ran alongside the magazine work. Observations, his first book, appeared in 1959 with a text by Truman Capote. Nothing Personal followed in 1964, with an essay by Baldwin. That book included pictures of patients in a Louisiana state hospital and of the civil rights movement, and he later photographed protesters against the Vietnam War.
In 1965 he guest edited the April issue of Harper’s Bazaar. Criticism followed over his work with models of colour, and he left the magazine. He joined Vogue and stayed for more than twenty years. In 1976 Rolling Stone published The Family, a set of portraits he made for the magazine. Over several years he also photographed his father, Jacob Israel Avedon, in old age and illness.
Wondering how a bare studio and a flash produce that look? Studio lighting setup explains the basic equipment and where to put it.
In the American West, 1979 to 1984
In 1979 Mitchell A. Wilder, director of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, commissioned Avedon to photograph the West. Over five years he went to state fairs, rodeos, carnivals, coal mines, oil fields, slaughterhouses and prisons. He photographed 762 people, among them miners, farmers, housewives and drifters, on about 17,000 sheets of 8×10 film.
The subjects were not famous, and the pictures did not show the open landscape that earlier photographs of the West had favoured. Each print took an average of thirty to forty adjustments in the darkroom, and printing the two exhibition sets took nine months. The exhibition opened at the Amon Carter Museum in 1985 and travelled to six other museums. The book was published the same year.
The work started an argument that has not ended. Some critics said that Avedon used his subjects and invited the viewer to pity them. Avedon said the pictures were about people and could have been made anywhere.
Why an Avedon picture looks the way it does
- Nothing behind the person. The white background removes the room, the job and the place. Only the face, hands, clothes and posture are left to describe the sitter. This is the opposite of the environmental portrait, where the setting tells the story. The page on negative space explains how empty area changes the weight of a subject.
- A big negative. An 8×10 sheet of film records skin, cloth and hair in great detail, and holds that detail when the print is made life size, as the Warhol group portrait was. See large format photography.
- Close framing. The portraits are often cropped so tightly that the figure runs past the edge of the frame. The closeness makes the viewer feel present, sometimes uncomfortably so.
- Black and white for portraits. He kept colour out of the portraits so that nothing would distract from the face. The site’s guide to black and white photography covers shooting with tone in mind.
- Movement in fashion. The models in his magazine pictures are caught in motion. The photographer has to see the gesture coming and release the shutter before it peaks. The guide to photographing moving subjects covers the settings.
- More than one frame. Some portraits are pairs or rows of frames joined together, such as the group portrait of Andy Warhol’s circle. See diptychs and triptychs for how paired pictures work.
- A worked print. The thirty to forty adjustments made to each American West print are the kind of local lightening and darkening explained in dodging and burning.
Avedon’s approach to portraiture influenced later photographers, among them Annie Leibovitz and Herb Ritts.
Want the general principles of photographing a person? Portrait photography: a complete guide to photographing people covers light, lenses and working with a sitter.
Photographs to look for
- Dovima with Elephants (1955). The model Dovima stands with circus elephants at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, wearing a floor length black evening dress from the house of Dior. The picture works by contrast between the gown and the animals. A print about seven feet high was sold at auction in 2010.
- Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York (1957). The actress in a sequined dress, in a contemplative moment. Look at the expression: it is not a performance for the camera.
- Andy Warhol and Members of the Factory (1969). A group portrait of thirteen people made on 8×10 film and assembled from several panels.
- Jacob Israel Avedon, Sarasota, Florida (1973). One of the portraits of his father near the end of his life, in a dark suit against white. The series was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1974.
- Boyd Fortin, Thirteen Year Old Rattlesnake Skinner (1979). A Texas boy from In the American West, holding a dead snake. Notice that the white background gives no hint of where he is standing.
- Petra Alvarado, factory worker, El Paso, Texas (1982). Photographed on her birthday, April 22, wearing a sash of flowers and dollar bills. It is in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum.
Try this: a white wall and one person
Fifteen minutes, one sitter, a camera or phone.
- Find a plain white or pale wall in open shade, or indoors facing a window. No direct sun on the wall.
- Stand the person an arm’s length in front of it, facing the light.
- Set the camera to black and white if it allows.
- Make twelve frames from the waist up. Do not ask for a smile or a pose. Talk, wait, and press the shutter when the person stops arranging their face.
- The constraint: nothing in the frame except the person and the wall. No furniture, no horizon, no corner of a door.
- Choose the one frame where the hands or shoulders say as much as the face.
Questions people ask about Richard Avedon
What camera did Richard Avedon use?
He used a Rolleiflex twin lens camera early in his career, including during his Merchant Marine service. For studio portraits he used an 8×10 view camera, and In the American West was photographed on 8×10 sheet film.
Why did Avedon use a white background?
A white background gives no information about place, so attention goes to the person alone. He also dropped props and soft lighting when he moved into the studio in the late 1950s.
What is In the American West?
It is a series of portraits of working people in the western United States, commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum in 1979 and made over five years. Avedon photographed 762 people. The exhibition and the book both appeared in 1985.
How did Richard Avedon die?
He died on October 1, 2004, in San Antonio, Texas, of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was on assignment for The New Yorker, working on a project about the 2004 presidential election. The Richard Avedon Foundation in New York holds his negatives, prints and papers.
Richard Avedon is one of the photographers listed in the A to Z of photographers.