Jamie: Week Two

Part One:

Portrait of Blair

Part Two: 

"Richard Avedon is a man with many masks: the American creator of dashing commercial images; the magician behind the sleekest magazine pages of the day,...the ruthless exposer of social and political flummery; the maverick storyteller who made titans of America's underclass and mixed them in among his pantheon of actors, writers, poets, politicians and artists." 

-Mark Irving, "Harsh Reality"

TELEGRAPH MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 21, 2002. 

Richard Avedon was born on May 15th, 1923 in New York, New York. Avedon was best known for “probing portraits that go beyond recording likenesses to explore the identity of society and reflect dreams and desires.” (http://www.bookrags.com/biography/richard-avedon/). Avedon was educated by the New York City public school system. From 1929-41 he attended P.S. 6, and Columbia University. He did not graduate high school, yet in 1942 he enlisted in Merchant Marine’s photographic section. Two years later he became a department store photographer, and only a year after that was hired as a fashion photographer. This was his big break; Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, hired him. In 1946 Avedon established his own studio. 

He took photographs of many famous people, but also took breathtaking portraits of every-day, middle class people. Avedon focuses solely on his subject by using a white background for all of his portraits and black and white film. It was these pictures that touched me most, not the fashion pictures. Avedon received many different awards for both his portraits and fashion shots. Richard Avedon died on October 1, 2004. He passed in San Antonio, Texas, while on assignment for The New Yorker magazine. 

“And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible.” 

-Richard Avedon, 1970. 




























-Jamie Solomon