Richard avedon biography photographs of trees

Summary of Richard Avedon

In a gesture of supreme, youthful confidence, Richard Avedon did away with the standard trope of statue-like, frozen-in-time models of conventional fashion photography. Instead the exuberant young photographer who legendarily never stood still, enlivened his models and, most importantly, showed their human side, flaws and all. He is probably best known, however, for his arresting, black-and-white and often large-format portraits of people, whether celebrities or unknowns, which are as much psychological studies as physical ones. Ranging between the commercial work he did as a fashion photographer and the ground-breaking fine art portraiture, the breadth and creativity of Avedon's body of work has made him one of the most influential photographers of the 20 century. His photographs, claimed the New York Times, "helped define America's image of style and beauty and culture" since the 1950s. While he didn't design the clothes that Veruschka or Twiggy or Brooke Shields wore, he created innovative contexts for both model and wearer, fashioning visually arresting, memorable images that altered the course of many facets of American culture.

Accomplishments

• Avedon's style of fashion photography brought a refreshing, humanistic quality to the genre. Avedon took models that seemed to be somewhat frozen in time and gave them vigor, personalities, and even flaws. There is often an underlying narrative as he realized that fashion photography wasn't simply about selling a product, but rather it was the overall spirit of the image that the viewer/consumer desired.
• Avedon's mastery of portraiture had as much to do with his rapport with his subjects as his technical ability or sense of aesthetics. His customary practice was to establish an intimacy between himself and his sitter, gaining a subject's trust became an art form in itself for Avedon. His deeply candid, emotive portraits, often photographed and printed in large format, helped reconf

Biography

Born in New York, Richard Avedon attended city public schools and Columbia University, and served in the photographic section of the merchant marines. He studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research from 1944 to 1950, and became the elder designer's protégé. Avedon was a staff photographer for Junior Bazaar and then Harper's Bazaar for some twenty years, and became a staff photographer at Vogue in 1966. In 1994 he was the first staff photographer hired by The New Yorker. For a photographer whose roots are in publication work, Avedon has been exceptionally successful in museums as well. He was included in the 1955 landmark exhibition The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art, and has received solo exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many other institutions. Most recently, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Evidence: 1944-1994, a career retrospective of his work, and ICP organized Avedon Fashion 1944–2000 in 2009. In 1993, Avedon received the Master of Photography Infinity Award from ICP.
Since the late 1940s--when Avedon's blurred black-and-white portrait heads were acclaimed for capturing the raw dynamism of youth--his photography has changed to reflect the style, energy and dynamism of the moment. He helped set the standard for sleek, urbane elegance in mid-twentieth century fashion photography, and his gift for highlighting the allure and drama of his subjects has made him one of the most iconic photographers of the late twentieth century. Avedon maintains that "a photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks."
Meredith Fisher
Handy et al. Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection, New York: Bulfinch Press in association with the

The Richard Avedon Foundation is demanding that a new biography of the photographer cease publication, alleging that it is “filled with countless inaccuracies” and is partly based on a work of fiction Avedon was working on at the time of his death. The book, Avedon: Something Personal by Norma Stevens and Steven Aronson, was released on November 21 by Penguin Random House’s imprint Spiegel and Grau. In a statement today, the Avedon foundation called on Spiegel and Grau “to cease publication, distribution, or any derivative or collateral use” of the book.

“The lack of fact-checking is outrageous because it’s so willful,” James Martin, the executive director of the Avedon Foundation, said in a statement sent to Hyperallergic. “I have spoken with many former colleagues and assistants going back to the 1960s, including people interviewed in [Norma Stevens’s] book, and none of us can believe the extraordinary liberties Stevens took in creating this so-called biography. Many can’t believe the words that she put into their mouths.”

Martin alleges that Stevens, who was the director of Avedon’s studio for some 30 years, stole an unfinished book of fiction that Avedon

It’s been said of the photographer Richard Avedon that his great genius as a portraitist was his ability to make famous faces funny and funny faces famous—and during a seminal period of the ’60s, when freewheeling flower power was colliding with Kennedy-era chic, there was no funny face more famous than Penelope Tree’s. Arresting in her beauty and unapologetically unique, with enormous eyes, barely there brows, and a kooky, revealing style that got her heckled on the street, Tree—a few days shy of her 17th birthday when she was discovered at Truman Capote’s legendary Black and White Ball—became the ultimate photographer’s muse. A particular pet of Diana Vreeland’s, she beguiled not just Avedon but also David Bailey, who, after turning his lens on her otherworldly visage, fell madly in love with her.

Half a century later, Tree’s ability to inspire hasn’t waned. In fact, in the mind of Tim Walker, who shot the images of Tree seen here, her appeal has only intensified with time. “She is the blueprint of individuality and extreme beauty,” says Walker, who, while working as Avedon’s “fourth assistant” in the ’90s, remembers printing—and marveling over—his boss’s iconic black and white shots of the proto-supermodel in all her waifish glory. “She was Karen Elson before Karen Elson. She trailblazed this idea of difference. To Kate Moss she’s like a goddess.”

Born in England to Ronald Tree, a conservative politician and heir to the Marshall Field’s fortune, and Marietta Peabody FitzGerald, a Yankee blue blood who later went on to become a U.S. representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Tree had a childhood that was equal parts privilege and, as she puts it on the phone from her home in England, “benign neglect.” When Marietta grew tired of the U.K., Ronald agreed to move the family to New York, and then quickly decamped to Barbados, where Tree would see him o