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0 viewsRichard Avedon: Darkness and LightOur PickA PBS series, American Master's episode on Avedon. Directed by Helen Whitney. -
43k viewsCharlie Rose (1993)Our PickInterview about Avedon's book, An Autobiography -
4k viewsCharlie Rose (1995)On Avedon's work with The New Yorker and fashion -
3k viewsCharlie Rose (1999)Discussion of Avedon's life work
Important Art by Richard Avedon
Dorian Leigh, Evening Dress by Piguet, Helena Rubinstein apartment, Ile Saint-Louis, Paris, August 1949 (1949)
While technically a fashion photo, with this image, Avedon stages an unfolding story of a woman regarding herself in a bathroom mirror. The viewer is given private access to fashion model, Dorian Leigh, who stands before a mirror in a brightly lit powder room, absorbed in her own looks. The photo creates a fiction in which the subject, oblivious to the fact that she is being observed, scrutinizes her appearance as the last stage of preparation for attending a formal event.
Leigh's pose is anything but graceful as she leans in toward the mirror to get a closer look. The photo is reminiscent of the backstage-at-the-ballet and other intimate paintings and drawings by Degas, whose ballerinas, like Avedon's models, more often appeared ungainly as he depicted them just one gesture removed from graceful.
Avedon's unconventional approach to fashion photography was in part an aesthetic departure from tradition and in part a rather ingenious understanding not merely of the marketing of haute couture but of desire itself. He was all too aware that selling a tale of glamour was just as important as selling the product itself. Leigh is far from the stoic model of earlier fashion photography.
Avedon was not merely a photographer; he was also a choreographer and theatrical director of sorts (Avedon had an active interest in theater all of his life). As a consequence, a fashion photo could easily resemble a scene from a film. He described the process he used for creating fashion photos with such cinematic flair, which began with him drawing-out the living, breathing woman beneath the beautiful veneer: "Take a model you're drawn to, and then imagine her as a woman." He believed that models became beautiful when they were doing something besides trying to be beautiful - smoking, drinking, walking, or gazing intently into a mirror.
Dovima with Elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, August 1955 (1955)
Shot under an enormous skylight, this photo is a play on contrasts. The pale skin and large ribbon of the famous fashion model, Dovima (Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba) stands out against the elephants' dark gray hide. Dovima's unblemished vibrancy rivals the rough, wrinkled texture of the elephants, pitting age against youth. Her strong, angular upwardly-oriented pose contrasts with the heavy curves and the weighty, downward thrust of the elephants' bodies. Avedon's narrative is a familiar one: the slender Dovima is the mistress of these massive, captive beasts. Beauty and the Beasts is retold in the confines of the studio.
This photograph additionally marks the professional ascendancy of not only Avedon, at the time in his early thirties, but also of the nineteen-year-old Yves Saint Laurent, whose design for Dovima's dress was his first creation for Dior.
Ever the affable perfectionist Avedon famously criticized his photograph, which may well be his most famous, stating, "I look at that picture to this day, and I don't know why I didn't have the sash blowing out to the left to complete the line of the picture. The picture will always be a failure to me because that sash isn't out there."
Marian Anderson (1955)
Avedon captures the famous American contralto, Marian Anderson in the strains of singing with her entire body. Frozen in a moment of intense emotion, Anderson's eyes are closed to allow for complete concentration. The movement of her loosened hair, flowing outward, provides the allusion that her projected voice has the power to move not only emotions but also things in the material world. In fact, the portrait was made in Avedon's studio, where Anderson sang for him unrestrained, informally.
Avedon's goal was to make the act of singing in some way visual through the use of photography. He explained his process and aims: "After looking at the print of the entire negative," he recalled, "I decided to crop it. I made the head much larger in relation to the entire picture area and placed it high and off center. This created a more dynamic composition that emphasizes the power and vitality of the subject."
Anderson represented not only excellence in the arts but also the emerging American civil rights movement. In 1939, she had famously been barred from performing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. by the Daughters of the American Revolution. In response, then First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned from the organization. The incident also provided Anderson with almost instant international notoriety. Not long afterwards, thanks to the assistance and support of the President and First Lady, Anderson performed at an Easter Sunday, open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. More than 75,000 people attended the concert and over a million listened to it live on the radio.
Avedon's photo was taken the year in which Anderson, an inspirational symbol of the demand for equal rights for all regardless of race, sang the role of Ulrica in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the New York City Metropolitan Opera. The portrait is also a declaration of support by Avedon for the civil rights movement and his stand against racial discrimination.
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