With his youthful Confidence, Avedon ignored the norm in which photographers
would have their models in a statue like pose, Avedon instead put (placed) more life
into his models. His images showed all the characteristics which made them humans
with all their flaws.
One of Avedon’s most well known projects is the “in the American west” series in
which he photographed people from a poor state in America (raegonomics era) in
front of a plain white wall.
Avedon is remembered for his stunning Black and white portraits of people in which
he would shoot with a large format camera.
Richard Avedon's work varied all the way from commercial to ground breaking fine
art portraiture up to fashion with all major magazines
He would innovate contexts for models, creating visually arresting images which
would be burned into the viewer’s memory.
His Style gave the scene of fashion photography a refreshing wave of difference, He
did this by essentially freezing the model and gave them a personality.
In Richard avedon’s eyes there was always another layer to fashion photography in
which he thought that in an image there was much more than selling the product but
rather the overall feeling and spirit of the image.
A technique he would use is one where he would have a shutter release tied to a
long cord which plugged into the camera, he would position his subject in front of the
camera, and Avedon would stroll around his studio making conversation with the
model until the model gave up and dropped his “mask” at this point Avedon would
take the photo, capturing the human behind the mask”. This is what set Avedon apart
from other photographers.
"Richard Avedon Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. 2020. TheArtStory.org Content compiled and written by Jackie Meade Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors Available from: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/avedon-richard/ First published on 06 Jan 2017. Updated and modified regularly. 📷 [Accessed 22 Jan 2020