Portraits

by Richard Avedon, Harold Rosenberg

For over 50 years, Richard Avedon (b. 1923) has captured the creative genius of our time with dazzling insight and incomparable style. Spanning the artist's entire career, from the late 1940s through his most recent work, Richard Avedon Portraits offers a superb selection of his photographic portraits.

With uncompromising directness, Avedon portrayed his subjects against a white background, with no extraneous details to distract from the essential specificity of face, gaze, dress, and gesture. This challenging innovation, coupled with the artist's intense interest in his subjects and mastery of his craft, resulted in mesmerizing portraits-among them Truman Capote, Willem de Kooning, Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, and Marilyn Monroe, as well as the uncelebrated Americans of his project, "In the American West"-that rival the greatest works in the portrait tradition.

Richard Avedon Portraits is published to accompany a major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. With its innovative accordion-style design and superb reproductions, the book is a virtual stand-alone mini-exhibition in its own right.

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction, Art and Photography, Coffee Table Books, Picture Books, The United States Of America

Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

People note fashion photography and stark portraits of Richard Avedon, an American.

Richard Avedon captured ideals of celebrity and beauty in the 20th and early 21st centuries to helped to establish a contemporary art form. Avedon developed a distinct, iconic style. While his contemporaries focused on single moments or composed formal images, his lighting and minimalist white backdrops drew the viewer to the intimate, emotive power of the expression of the subject.

Richard Avedon studied philosophy at Columbia University, New York, and served in the department of the merchant marines of the United States before studying with Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research.

From 1945, he worked and revolutionized the craft even as he honed his aesthetic to 1965. He worked in magazines from Harper's Bazaar and Vogue to Life and Look. Later, he moved into journalism and the art world. His subjects included pop stars, models, musicians, writers, artists, workers, political activists, soldiers, victims of Vietnam War, politicians, and his family.

Curator Paul Roth observes: “In an Avedon portrait, the face maps an intersection: It is a place where the world outside the photograph meets the world inside the mind.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented solo exhibitions in 1978 and 2002. The Whitney Museum of Art in New York in 1994 mounted major retrospective. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek, Denmark, mounted his works in 2007, and the exhibit traveled to Milan, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and San Francisco through 2009.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a semi-interesting essay, we move on to what really counts - the photos.
Some of the more recognizable faces were - Gabriel García Márquez, Truman Capote, John Ford, Groucho Marx, Jean Renoir, Carson McCullers, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, and Jorge Luis Borges. Very striking and great quality images.

[Ray Dunsmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Avedon has a preternatural gift for revealing some odd facet of his portrait subjects in every photo he takes. Every page in this book is like its own section of an autobiography, each wrinkle in the subject's face reveals a wealth of experience, of deep sorrows or joys, of a deep respect for the chaotic tumults of life. The most fascinating portrait is the fold-out of Andy Warhol's Factory, a bizarre, detached parade of debauchery. It tries to subvert every societal norm it can in personalities so purposely contrived to seem wholly unnatural. These strange insights and the beautiful grey tones of his photos prove why he's, by far, the world's greatest portrait photographer.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is published in a novel accordian format. So you can open the book on one side and there is text with a few pictures, but when you open it from the other side and it's only photographs. You could potentially open the whole book across your living room floor and see all the photographs at once. Pretty cool. I only gave it three stars because, although Richard Avedon's portrait photography is genius, I prefer Leibovitz style of putting her subjects in a setting that tell a story. Avedon's trademark pure white background is, well, what it is.

[Burghard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect !

[Digi M · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is beauty in this slim book of portraiture, although most of the poses and framing are not conventional. Avedon is my favorite, similar to a painter, he has a unique way of indenting his style into the photo.

His subjects range from authors, to poets, lawyers and politicians. Some of them look not particularly pleased to be posing, others look indifferent, and a few have let the camera into their being.

Highly recommended.

[Kathie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The photos are amazing, obviously, but the crazy accordion binding is something I could do without.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truman Capote mentioned Avedon in an interview, so had to check him out. He was photographer to Hollywood and high society: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Marilynne Monroe, Truman Capote, Alger Hiss, Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol and the Factory, best dressed women and drifters. His portraits feature a white background and pensive faces.

[Avi O · Rating 4 out of 5]

i got to see this in it's accordion style which was super cool

[Nieves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es impresionante como captura la esencia de las personas

[GONE HU I-Mael · Rating 5 out of 5]

i highly recommended it, it's a wonderful book, i love it, really good book

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I enjoyed the introduction's discussion of the unavoidable photographer and the subject collaboration... the subject looks to present how he perceives himself and the photographer looks to show what he sees. And I do enjoy seeing the pictures of these mostly famous people stripped down to just themselves with little or no hint of their accomplishments or failures. But, overall, I won't remember the majority of these images tomorrow no matter how much intellectual stuff can be written on Avedon's method and reasons... and that's how I judge a photograph.

[Becca Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange that he started out as a fashion photographer. I've seen some exhibits of his [non-fashion-photog] work, and it is jaw-dropping.

[Camelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

learn more about potrait

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

purchased for my library - Friday June 12th

[Paola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una meraviglia.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent photographs. I enjoyed the way the photographer captured the character of each person.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good!!

"My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph" - Richard Avedon

[Peter Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece. The reason I became a Photographer.

[Ray LaManna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific Portraits