Edited by Rebecca A. Senf Over sixty years of work by one of the great masters of twentieth-century photography

Photographer Richard Avedon, with a more than six-decade-long career, produced innovative and delightful work in fashion, as well as incisive and captivating portraits. Over the course of his lifetime he worked with a number of models and a wide range of portrait subjects, creating a powerful body of pictures that allow his viewers to study the likenesses of actors, ballet dancers, celebrities, civil rights activists, heads of state, inventors, musicians, visual artists and writers.

Avedon offers viewers the opportunity to study faces without crossing any socially imposed boundaries about staring too long; he encourages viewers to think about the people before them, the lives they have lived, their private personalities and public personas, their struggles, accomplishments, disappointments, and joys. Richard Avedon. Relationships presents a selection of 100 iconic fashion photographs and portraits, from the extensive collection at the Center for Creative Photography, to delve into his approach to photographing people.

Avedon’s combination of talent and skill, technical proficiency and attuning to his individual subjects, allowed him to make portraits that are riveting presentations of the people he photographed. Indeed, he achieved mastery of the portraiture form. Avedon had the opportunity to photograph a number of his portrait subjects on more than one occasion. Within the catalogue it is possible to see painter Jasper Johns in 1965 and 1976; novelist Carson McCullers in 1956 and 1958; the Beatles Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, and poet Allen Ginsberg in 1963 and 1970. Perhaps the most dramatic and powerful example of Avedon’s ongoing photographic relationship is that with his friend and collaborator, Truman Capote.

About the Author:

Rebecca Senf is an American writer, and curator working in the field of photography. She is the Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, since January of 2016.

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A tribute to Richard Avedon (1923-2004), the American photographer whose name and images became associated with iconic magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and The New Yorker.
A celebrated portraitist, Avedon was among the founding fathers of fashion photography, revolutionizing its style when, as early as 1945, he stopped portraying models in static poses, favoring instead realistic settings. Avedon’s images are almost cinematographic, leading the viewer to imagine the tales and stories they seem to evoke.

Avedon’s lens not only immortalized the era’s most famous models, but also a rich array of personalities including actors, dancers, celebrities, artists, musicians, writers, civil rights activists, and even heads of state. Not infrequently, the same subject was also portrayed several times and at different periods, establishing true photographic relationships that reveal different aspects of both the person portrayed and their relationship with the photographer.

Realized in collaboration with the Center for Creative Photography and The Richard Avedon Foundation (with Versace as main partner and Vogue Italia as media partner), Richard Avedon. Relationships features more than one hundred iconic fashion photographs and portraits from the Center’s collection including artists Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson, Ezra Pound, Truman Capote, John Ford, Michelangelo Antonioni, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, Malcom X, Kofi Annan, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and last but not least, models Dovima, Veruschka, and Linda Evangelista. In all of these extraordinary works, one perceives the photographer’s ability to capture facial expressions, body language and the moments, changes, styles and tensions that have characterized our society through the years. These qualities are even more evident in the black & white portraits for which Avedon became famous. Photos of people who made history in the 20th century, of fashion models and ordinary people, which

The first survey of Richard Avedon’s influential advertising work

Richard Avedon was one of the most sought-after and influential advertising photographers in America from the 1940s to the beginning of the 21st century, creating work that exemplified Madison Avenue at the height of its influence in world culture. Working with a talented cadre of models, copywriters, and art directors, Avedon made images that enticed consumers to embrace the new, especially in the areas of fashion and beauty, with campaigns for Revlon, Chanel, Calvin Klein, Dior, and Versace, among many others. Avedon Advertising tells this story, reproducing memorable ads that range from the buoyant 1940s and 1950s when post-war prosperity opened up new experiences to consumers; through the explosive ’60s; and into the era defined by celebrity culture and global brand awareness.

About the Authors:

Laura Avedon and James Martin are the directors of the Richard Avedon Foundation in New York City. Rebecca Arnold is senior lecturer in history of dress and textiles at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Her books include The American Look (2008) and Fashion: A Short Introduction (2009). She lives in London. 

Exploring Richard Avedon’s fascination with France, Avedon’s France brings together a collection of spectacular photographs; selected interviews, letters, publications, and writings (including new material from the Avedon Foundation archives); and substantive essays by the authors.

In addition to five portfolios of French sitters spanning a lifetime of portraiture, it looks at Avedon’s apprenticeship to his mentor, Alexei Brodovitch; his encounters with French fashion; his idealized version of Paris in the movie Funny Face; his fresh take on the belle epoque in his book on Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Diary of a Century; and his fruitful association with the magazine Egoïste later in his life.

Avedon’s France offers a full account of Avedon’s restless pursuit of new ways of looking at the world, and it reveals a master image maker, a true artist for his time.

Among the significant projects of the last years of his life, Richard Avedon (1923–2004) completed a book of his photographs of women.

Always transcending categorization - he was both a fashion photographer and known as a “poet of portraiture” - Avedon was interested in seeing how elemental facts of modern life and human existence were reflected in his work. And what could be more elemental than women, who have mesmerized artists across the centuries? Looking at his work in this way, Avedon was able to create an unparalleled view of women in his time, a tumultuous half-century of rapidly changing social mores, cultural ideals, popular styles, and high fashion. As an artist, he was deeply responsive to nuances of expression, gesture, and comportment, and his photographs unfailingly opened a window to the interior lives of his subjects.

These ranged from celebrities (Marilyn Monroe), artists (Maria Callas, Isak Dinesen), and high-fashion models (Suzy Parker, Kate Moss) to women who simply drew his attention. Like the best of art and literature, Avedon's portraits evoke rich lives and complex experiences. An incisive essay by art historian Anne Hollander offers an overview of a half-century of Avedon's images of women.

About the Authors:

Richard Avedon was one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century. His portrait work comprises an authoritative record of our era and he redefined the fashion photograph. In 1992, he became the first staff photographer of The New Yorker.

Anne Hollander is the author of several books, including Feeding the Eye, Moving Pictures, and Seeing Through Clothes.

Richard Avedon’s most indelible images of Dior fashions and portraits from the 1940s through the ’70s, including many never-before-published photographs. Richard Avedon’s iconic fashion work not only changed fashion photography but also changed the way the world looks at fashion. One of his most prolific collaborations was with the house of Dior, which can be traced back to 1947, just after the haute couture house had taken the Paris fashion world by storm.

This lavish volume includes 150 iconic and many never-before-published photographs by Avedon, featuring glamorous models and celebrities, including Marlene Dietrich, Suzy Parker, Sunny Hartnett, Dovima, Carmen Dell’Orefice, Dorian Leigh, Capucine, Lauren Hutton, Anjelica Huston, and Barbra Streisand. Avedon’s images document Dior’s fashion, as well as fashion history from the 1940s through the ’70s. With an eye for moments of grace, drama, and humor, as well as a mastery of light and contrast, Avedon captures the essence of Dior’s elegant designs, the style and personality of the iconic women who wore them, and incredible moments in photography that will intrigue photography, art, and fashion lovers alike.

About the Author:

Jacqueline de Ribes is a French socialite and fashion designer. In addition to being a muse to many designers, including Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent, she has been a member of the International Best Dressed List since 1962. Justine Picardie is an accomplished author and editor-in-chief of British Harper’s Bazaar. Olivier Saillard is director of the Palais Galliera, the City of Paris’s Museum of Fashion. He is a renowned fashion historian and author.

"We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be."
 - Richard Avedon, 1974

The preeminent stars and artists of the performing arts from the second half of the 20th century offered their greatest gifts - and, sometimes, their inner lives - to Richard Avedon. More than 200 are portrayed in Performance, many in photographs that have been rarely or never seen before. Of course, the great stars light the way: Hepburn and Chaplin, Monroe and Garland, Brando and Sinatra. But here too are the actors and comedians, pop stars and divas, musicians and dancers, artists in all mediums with public lives that were essentially performances, who stand at the pinnacle of our cultural achievement.

The celebrated author and critic John Lahr offers an elegant assessment of Avedon’s achievement. Four supremely talented artists from the performing arts - Mike Nichols, André Gregory, Mitsuko Uchida, and Twyla Tharp - contribute lively and moving memoirs about their collaborations with Avedon.

About the Authors: 

John Lahr is Senior Drama Critic of The New Yorker. In 2002, he was the first drama critic ever to win a Tony Award. 

Mike Nichols is an American Emmy Award, Academy Award, Grammy Award, and Tony Award-winning stage and film director, writer, and producer. André Gregory is an American director and actor. His best-known film appearance was as the title character in My Dinner with Andre. 

Mitsuko Uchida is a classical pianist, renowned for her recordings of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. 

Twyla Tharp is a leading American dancer and choreographer.

No photographer had a more serious and deeply felt response to the political and cultural impact of the 1960s and early 1970s than Richard Avedon, whose iconic portraits of key figures of the era influenced the course of photography in the decades that followed.

In four monumental photographic murals (reproduced in large gatefolds) and many related portraits, he portrayed Andy Warhol’s gender-bending Factory, with Viva and Candy Darling; Abbie Hoffman and the radical agitators of the Chicago Seven; Allen Ginsberg’s family, friends, and fellow artists; and the U.S. Mission Council in Saigon alongside searing portraits of victims of the Vietnam War.

The photographs are accompanied by images of archival material, including Avedon’s diaries, correspondence, and contact prints. Major essays explore Avedon’s penetrating incursions into the history and spirit of these tumultuous years

Richard Avedon photographed the faces of politics throughout his career and this book brings together his political portraits for the first time. Juxtaposing images of elite government, media, and labor officials with photographs of countercultural activists, writers and artists, and ordinary citizens caught up in national debates, it explores a five-decade taxonomy of politics and power by one of America’s best-known artists.

The book features Avedon’s extended projects on the civil rights debate in the early 1960s (published in 1964 in Nothing Personal); the American anti-war movement and the war in Vietnam from 1969-1971; portraits of the American power elite in 1976 for his groundbreaking Rolling Stone portfolio The Family; “Exiles: The Kennedy Court at the End of the American Century,” a retrospective homage to the Camelot generation, published in The New Yorker in 1993; and his final photo-essay, “Democracy,” surveying the American state of mind during the politically-fractious time prior to the country’s 2004 presidential election (published posthumously in The New Yorker in 2004).

Among the significant projects of the last years of his life, Richard Avedon (1923–2004) completed a book of his photographs of women. Always transcending categorization - he was both a fashion photographer and known as a “poet of portraiture” - Avedon was interested in seeing how elemental facts of modern life and human existence were reflected in his work. And what could be more elemental than women, who have mesmerized artists across the centuries? Looking at his work in this way, Avedon was able to create an unparalleled view of women in his time, a tumultuous half-century of rapidly changing social mores, cultural ideals, popular styles, and high fashion.

As an artist, he was deeply responsive to nuances of expression, gesture, and comportment, and his photographs unfailingly opened a window to the interior lives of his subjects. These ranged from celebrities (Marilyn Monroe), artists (Maria Callas, Isak Dinesen), and high-fashion models (Suzy Parker, Kate Moss) to women who simply drew his attention. Like the best of art and literature, Avedon's portraits evoke rich lives and complex experiences. An incisive essay by art historian Anne Hollander offers an overview of a half-century of Avedon's images of women.

About the Authors:

Richard Avedon was one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century. His portrait work comprises an authoritative record of our era and he redefined the fashion photograph. In 1992, he became the first staff photographer of The New Yorker.
Anne Hollander is the author of several books, including Feeding the Eye, Moving Pictures, and Seeing Through Clothes.

Richard Avedon: Fashion 1944-2000 shows Richard Avedon's extraordinary fashion photographs from almost seven decades

With his early innovative photographs for "Harper's Bazaar" and his creative sessions for "Vogue", "Egoiste" and "The New Yorker" Richard Avedon had influenced 20th-century fashion photography as no one else, working together with the best models, stylists and designers.

Avedon Fashion 1944-2000 encompasses seven decades of extraordinary images by Richard Avedon, the most influential fashion photographer of the 20th century.

This comprehensive volume offers a definitive survey, from Avedon's groundbreaking early photographs for Harper's Bazaar through his constantly inventive contributions to Vogue, Egoiste, and The New Yorker. Each carefully selected image represents an artistic collaboration with significant models, stylists, and designers. Avedon Fashion accompanies the first major exhibition to survey this body of work, at the International Center of Photography in May 2009. With critical essays by Carol Squiers, curator at the ICP, and photography critic Vince Aletti, as well as an appreciation by photo-historian Philippe Garner, Avedon Fashion chronicles an astonishing record of photographic achievement.

About the Authors: 

Carol Squiers, curator at the International Center of Photography, has contributed to Artforum, the New York Times, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. She lives in New York.

Vince Aletti, adjunct curator at ICP and former art editor of The Village Voice, reviews photography exhibitions for The New Yorker. He lives in New York.

Performance, von der Richard Avedon Foundation zusammengestellt, ist Avedons Hommage an alle Spielarten der darstellenden Kunste. Avedon liebte das Theater und war vom Buhnengeschehen seiner Zeit ebenso fasziniert wie von dessen Protagonisten. Alles, was in dieser schillernden Szene in den vergangenen 50 Jahren Rang und Namen hatte, landete fruher oder spater in seinem Studio: Judy Garland und Chaplin, Horowitz und Bernstein, die Beatles und Bob Dylan, Marlon Brando und Frank Sinatra, Martha Graham, Rudolf Nurejew, Merce Cunningham …

"We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be."
 - Richard Avedon, 1974

The preeminent stars and artists of the performing arts from the second half of the 20th century offered their greatest gifts - and, sometimes, their inner lives - to Richard Avedon. More than 200 are portrayed in Performance, many in photographs that have been rarely or never seen before. Of course, the great stars light the way: Hepburn and Chaplin, Monroe and Garland, Brando and Sinatra. But here too are the actors and comedians, pop stars and divas, musicians and dancers, artists in all mediums with public lives that were essentially performances, who stand at the pinnacle of our cultural achievement.

The celebrated author and critic John Lahr offers an elegant assessment of Avedon’s achievement. Four supremely talented artists from the performing arts - Mike Nichols, André Gregory, Mitsuko Uchida, and Twyla Tharp - contribute lively and moving memoirs about their collaborations with Avedon.

An irrepressible innovator, Avedon has consistently defied conventional expectations about what a portrait is supposed to look like..." - Maria Morris Hambourg and Mia Fineman For over 50 years, Richard Avedon (b. 1923) has captured the creative genius of our time with dazzling insight and incomparable style. Spanning the artist's entire career, from the late 1940s through his most recent work, Richard Avedon Portraits offers a superb selection of his photographic portraits. With uncompromising directness, Avedon portrayed his subjects against a white background, with no extraneous details to distract from the essential specificity of face, gaze, dress, and gesture. This challenging innovation, coupled with the artist's intense interest in his subjects and mastery of his craft, resulted in mesmerizing portraits — among them Truman Capote, Willem de Kooning, Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, and Marilyn Monroe, as well as the uncelebrated Americans of his project, "In the American West" that rival the greatest works in the portrait tradition. Richard Avedon Portraits is published to accompany a major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. With its innovative accordion-style design and superb reproductions, the book is a virtual stand-alone mini-exhibition in its own right.

About the Author:

Richard Avedon is one of the most influential photographers of the second half of the 20th century. His portrait work comprises an authoritative record of our era. His many books have set a standard for photographic publishing. As a staff photographer for Harper's Bazaar and later for Vogue, Avedon redefined what a fashion photograph is. In 1992 he was named the first staff photographer in the history of The New Yorker. Maria Morris Hambourg is Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She has written and contributed to many books on the history of photography. Mia Fineman is a Research Assistant in the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum

American photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) received widespread acclaim for his images in which he captured stars with their “masks dropped” and their true colors revealed. He was also notorious for the pitiless way in which he created these moments. For example, he told two great animal lovers, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that his taxi had run over a dog on the way to the photoshoot - and in that second he caught their horrified reaction on film. This attitude, however, was not reserved merely for the rich and famous. Through his legendary project In the American West, hundreds of his uncompromising portraits of common people became photographic icons.

This large-format publication presents over one hundred of his most beautiful classic images.