Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedonwas an American fashion and portrait photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth15 May 1923
CountryUnited States of America
photography thinking may
Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is...the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.
fashion important way
There's always been a separation between fashion and what I call my 'deeper' work. Fashion is where I make my living. I'm not knocking it. It's a pleasure to make a living that way. It's pleasure and then there's the deeper pleasure of doing my portraits. It's not important what I consider myself to be, but I consider myself to be a portrait photographer.
sleep single-life
He sleeps fastest who sleeps alone.
photography art children
Photography has always reminded me of the second child.. trying to prove itself. The fact that it wasn't really considered an art.. that it was considered a craft.. has trapped almost every serious photographer.
dog taken home
When I was a boy, my family took great care with our snapshots. We really planned them. We made compositions. We posed in front of expensive cars, homes, that werent ours. We borrowed dogs. Almost every family picture taken of us when I was young had a different borrowed dog in it.
photography people portraits
When you pose for a photograph, it's behind a smile that isn't yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people.
ideas people
I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.
artist photographer wanted
I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.
guy feelings looks
I see pictures of myself and I always knew that what I was feeling didn't look like that guy in the pictures.
high-heels legs advertising
Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.
children hate men
How many pictures have you torn up because you hate them? What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people.
men people tree
I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people.
way cameras portraits
The way someone who's being photographed presents himself to the camera, and the effect of the photographer's response on that presence, is what the making of a portrait is all about.
love-you believe want
I believe that you've got to love your work so much that it is all you want to do.