Couldn’t think of a clever headline. One of the best fashion photographers and worst (or cruelest) portrait photographers of his day:
NEW YORK (AP) - Richard Avedon, the revolutionary photographer who redefined fashion photography as an art form while achieving critical acclaim through his stark black-and-white portraits of the powerful and celebrated, died Friday. He was 81. Avedon’s influence on photography was immense, and his sensuous fashion work helped create the era of supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford. But Avedon went in another direction with his portrait work, shooting unsparing and often unflattering shots of subjects from Marilyn Monroe to Michael Moore. “The results can be pitiless,” Time magazine critic Richard Lacayo once noted of the black-and-white portraits. “With every wrinkle and sag set out in high relief, even the mightiest plutocrat seems just one more dwindling mortal.”
I have kind of a problem with him . . . An actress acquaintance of mine (character actress, ordinary-looking gal) was photographed by him for The New Yorker, and when it was published, she cried for a week: every wrinkle, sag, jowl was not only shown, but accentuated.
Did she not know of Avedon’s reputation and style? No disrespect to your friend but shouldn’t she have expected it and either refused the photo shoot or asked for a different photographer?
I think when your agent says, “Richard Avedon’s going to shoot you for a New Yorker piece,” you pretty much have to say, “ummm, woo-hoo?” or kiss your career (and your agent) good-bye.
Mind you, I think he was one of the genius fashion photogs of the century. I just think his portraits were cruel for the sake of cruelty, not “art.”
I’ve never been that into photography, since so much of it is mediocre, but I’ve always like Avedon’s Beatles portraits, especially this one of John Lennon.
Granted, I was completely familiar with his work until the announcement of his death. (I’d seen some of his famous ones, like the portrait of Nastassia Kinski with a snake, but didn’t know the name of the photographer).
But was it really his intention with his portraits to be cruel and accentuate the flaws? From what I can see on his website, I just get more of a sense of “uncompromising” and “showing what the subject really looks like” instead of some glamour shot. Take this really interesting portrait of Charlize Theron and Patty Jenkins.
Don’t know if anyone is interested, but I saw this photo in an Architectural Digest article on Elton John’s homes. He has a copy of this photo hanging over the sofa in the living room of his Atlanta apartment that is approximately 4’ X 5’ in size, and it’s ensconced in a beautiful gold(en) frame, the cost of which would probably pay for a house for most of us. Man, that guy has some beautiful stuff!
He was–how shall I say this?–versatile. Some of his portraits, like some of the ones linked to here (Lennon, Hepburn, Marion Anderson) were brilliant. And I maintain that his fashion photography was art: it had the lighting, composition, quirkiness, imagination that raised it above what you usually see in fashion mags–certainly today’s fashion mags!
What I hate (and again, this is purely opinion!) are his “lean 'em up against a wall, throw harsh lighting on 'em and snap the photo” photos, several of which are in his Times obit today. I don’t see that as “art,” I see it as “my driver’s license photo.”
