Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon is one of my favorite photographers.

The clip below is from a show at the International Center of Photography, called "Through the Eyes of Richard Avedon". The clip includes comments from the curators of the show and mentions a few things I did not know about Richard Avedon's Career.

For example, Harper's Bazaar had a policy that they would not use photographers non-Caucasians in the magazine - ever. Well, Avedon threatened to quit unless that used a Portuguese-Chinese model he liked. He, of course, followed this with an African-American model and thus started the trend of matching the ethic background mix of the public in the magazine.

I wish I could see the show in NYC, but I am not traveling for a little bit. Hopefully, someone will report back on the show.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/13/fashion/20090514-avedon-feature/index.html

Avedon on the Internet

I'm not sure of you are a Richard Avedon fan, but I am one. I really like some of the interesting directions he took with his work. Not just his creative portraiture of the beautiful or famous (or both), but work like his American West. Just taking a road trip and photographing what we consider the familiar in a way that highlighted it and let us see the interesting things that are around us every day, but we often miss.

The Avedon Foundation (here) has an incredible collection of his work, both in photographs and articles. The site is clean and easy to navigate with a remarkable amount of material in a very uncluttered style.

I highly recommend you check out this site, as I don't think you'll be dissappointed.