ART & COMMERCE

Defining beauty
through Avedon
By Philip Gefter,
nytimes.com, Sept. 18, 2005

RICHARD AVEDON honored women. For

nearly half a century, taking photographs for
the top two fashion magazines in the world,
Harperʼs Bazaar and Vogue, women were the
subject and the target of his insistent, yet sym-
pathetic gaze. From the models in his fashion
tableaux to his later, unembellished portraits
of artists, writers, intellectuals, socialites and
hardscrabble workers in the American West,
his regard for the fully realized individual re-
mained constant.
At first, Avedon practiced taking fashion
pictures of his beautiful younger sister, Lou-
ise, and throughout “Woman in the Mirror”
(Abrams), a new collection of Avedonʼs pic-
tures, that respectful posture turns all women
into the potential sister — an undeniably beau-
tiful, but deeply kindred spirit. There is an erot-
ic component to some of these pictures, but he
seems less concerned with menʼs arousal than
with the subtle cues women take from one an-
other, a view that places sexuality in a larger
constellation of human qualities.
After being discovered by Alexey Brodo-
vitch, the art director of Harperʼs Bazaar, Ave-
don began taking photographs for the maga-
zine in 1947, the year Dior introduced the New
Look and just two years before Simone de
Beauvoirʼs “Second Sex” was published. The

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New Look was modernity incarnate and the sculptural lines and
cosmopolitan flourishes were perfect for Avedon, who seized upon
it to make cinematic images in which the models inhabited the
clothes like characters in a movie. And, as if Simone de Beauvoir
were looking over his shoulder, Avedonʼs photography animated
women with spirit and determination.
Through Avedonʼs eyes, female beauty is not viewed with dis-
trust, as a collection of wiles and veils that can manipulate, obfus-
cate or seduce. In one photograph, the model Liz Pringle stands
effortlessly poised in a boat, with the manner of an heiress in a
breezy movie from the 1950ʼs. She holds a cigarette and looks our
way with the sly grin of a secret shared, as if we are among her
closest friends. You know the picture is all about the clothes, but
the soignée sophistication of the scene is what draws you in.
He had many muses, among them Dovima, whose name alone
conjures an exotic creature of myth. (In fact, Dorothy Virginia Mar-
garet Juba created her name from the first two letters of each of her
given names.) In one Avedon picture, she wears a dress by Jacques
Fath, and it appears as some-
thing sacred and ceremonial,
Avedon distilled a Dovima assuming the stature
variety of elements of a pageant queen.
into a simple and His photograph of Penelope
distinct visual Tree is as much a portrait of
signature: the element the real society girl as it is a
of surprise, for model wearing the latest fash-
example, in his most ion. The pants suit was a new
famous picture of concept at the time, the bell
Dovima with the bottom an emerging style;
elephants at the his picture is playful and
Cirque d’Hiver in free-spirited, and she strikes
Paris, the large, a Pippi Longstocking note -
bulbous creatures unconventional but all grown
forming a backdrop of up, cosmopolitan and top-of-
unharnessed animal the-moment, out in the world
instinct against which on her own terms.
the elegance of high And his portrait of the writ-
fashion stands in er Renata Adler is stripped of
dramatic relief. decoration, leaving the anato-

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 downtrodden young woman from his After being discovered by
series “In the American West.” “To Alexey Brodovitch, the art
him, Debbie McClendonʼs fragility and director of Harper’s Bazaar,
tenderness resembled a Botticelli.” Avedon began taking
Movie history has permanently photographs for the
married Richard Avedon to Audrey magazine in 1947, the year
Hepburn thanks to “Funny Face,” star- Dior introduced the New
ring Fred Astaire as the fashion pho- Look. The New Look was
tographer Dick Avery, who is based on modernity incarnate and the
Avedon. In the book, “Richard Ave- sculptural lines and
don: Made in France,” Judith Thurman cosmopolitan flourishes were
writes that “Funny Face” is an artifact perfect for Avedon, who
of a remote, lost civilization. Three of seized upon it to make
its purest pleasures have not dated: cinematic images in which the
Hepburnʼs face, Givenchyʼs couture, models inhabited the clothes
and Astaireʼs dancing — all pertinent, like characters in a movie.
the dancing, in particular, to Avedonʼs
work.
She equates Astaireʼs buoyancy to Avedonʼs pictures, the classical discipline with
which the dancer, like the photographer, made the artificial and rehearsed seem ef-
fervescent and spontaneous.
Avedon distilled a variety of elements into a simple and distinct visual signature:
the element of surprise, for example, in his most famous picture of Dovima with
the elephants at the Cirque dʼHiver in Paris, the large, bulbous creatures forming a
backdrop of unharnessed animal instinct against which the elegance of high fashion
stands in dramatic relief. Or glamour in his picture of Sunny Harnett, the top model
in her day, at a posh European casino; he made her shimmer like a Hitchcock blonde
in a Madame Grès dress. Or wit in his picture of Carmen stepping off the ground, as
if by wearing a Pierre Cardin coat you, too, could be walking on air.
He played a stunning hand with visual onomatopoeia as well: his portrait of Kath-
arine Hepburn with her mouth opened elicits the very sound of her distinctive accent;
his portrait of Louise Nevelson, with her heavy eyeliner and sculptural jewelry, turns
her into one of her own works of art; and his portrait of Marella Agnelli, in which her
my of her face, the intransigence of her posture and the gravity of her braid to rep- elongated neck conjures Modigliani, her entire form as graceful as a Brancusi.
resent a modern-day Athena, goddess of the intellect, taking our measure as much Despite decades of imitators, Avedon has proved inimitable. His curiosity fueled
as we take hers. his imagination. He anticipated the tone of each era with a sophistication that was
“Dick had a very particular taste for what he thought was a beautiful woman,” precision-cut in the stratosphere of art, fashion and culture at which he so naturally,
said Norma Stevens, executive director of the Richard Avedon Foundation. Paging and tenaciously, hovered. He never stopped experimenting with the photographic
through the book in her New York office, she stopped at a portrait of a seemingly image and, always, his pictures reflect a regard for women that was truly debonair.

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An interview with Richard Avedon
By Nicole Wisniak. Egoïste, Sept. 1984

Nicole Wisniak: Do you think a photographer is a person obsessed by the fact that
things disappear?
Richard Avedon: I canʼt generalize. All that remains of my father is my photo-
graph, that is to say film, but I donʼt think thatʼs why I photograph. I see all the time
— I very often donʼt listen. I can be in conversation with someone and at a certain
point, stop hearing what is said, start pretending to listen. My good friends know
when that happens.
The way I see is comparable to the way musicians hear, something extra sensory.
Not judgmental. I donʼt differentiate between an idea of what is beautiful and what is
not. What I see is a reaffirmation of the many things I need to feel. It has to do with
obsessive qualities, not explainable. I am a natural photographer. It is my language, I
speak through my photographs more intricately, more deeply than with words.
N.W.: But this overdeveloped eye is sometimes pitiless. You reveal in your por-
traits facets of character that people would perhaps have preferred not to show. Do
you think it is possible to hide oneʼs self in front of your camera?
R.A.: I am not necessarily interested
in the secret of a person. The fact that
‘There is no truth in there are qualities a subject doesnʼt
photography. There is no want me to observe is an interesting
truth about anyone’s person. fact. Interesting enough for a portrait.
My portraits are much more It then becomes a portrait of someone
about me than they are about who doesnʼt want something to show.
the people I photograph. I That is interesting. There is no truth in
used to think that it was a photography. There is no truth about
collaboration, that it was anyoneʼs person. My portraits are much
something that happened as more about me than they are about the
a result of what the subject people I photograph. I used to think
wanted to project and what that it was a collaboration, that it was
the photographer wanted something that happened as a result
to photograph. I no longer of what the subject wanted to project is complicated. Everyone comes to the camera with a certain expectation and the
think it is that at all. The and what the photographer wanted to deception on my part is that I might appear to be indeed part of their expectation. If
photographer has complete photograph. I no longer think it is that you are painted or written about, you can say: but thatʼs not me, thatʼs Bacon, thatʼs
control, the issue is a moral at all. The photographer has complete Soutine; thatʼs not me, thatʼs Celine.
one and it is complicated.’ control, the issue is a moral one and it N.W.: Picasso answered to that saying about Gertrude Stein: “Thatʼs not how she

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 “May I do a portrait of you?” ‘I used to believe that I
It is complicated and unresolved in could only photograph what
my mind because I believe in moral I knew and understood. I
responsibility of all kinds. I feel I understood artists, people
have no right to say, “This is the way of high achievement, power,
it is” and in another way, I canʼt help beauty, at least I thought I
myself. It is for me the only way to understood those things.
breathe and to live. I could say it is the I said once in an interview
nature of art to make such assumptions that I had no idea what it
but there has never been an art like was like to be black or what
photography before. You cannot make it was like to be a factory
a photograph of a person without that worker, and so I couldn’t
personʼs presence, and that very pres- photograph them. Of course,
ence implies truth. A portrait is not a it was not true. ... As a
likeness. The moment an emotion or matter of fact, the people I
fact is transformed into a photograph have photographed for this
it is no longer a fact but an opinion. book seemed more generous
There is no such thing as inaccuracy in with their selves, less
a photograph. All photographs are ac- guarded, often easier to see.’
curate. None of them are truth.
N.W.: You have been working for
many years on a new book on the working class. Did you begin this new work be-
cause you were fed up with the elite?
R.A.: No, not at all. I have been working for many many years as a portrait pho-
tographer, on portraits of Americans. But I used to believe that I could only photo-
graph what I knew and understood. I understood artists, people of high achievement,
power, beauty, at least I thought I understood those things. I said once in an interview
that I had no idea what it was like to be black or what it was like to be a factory
worker, and so I couldnʼt photograph them. Of course, it was not true. But it took
me a long time to know in my stomach that people share the same concerns, and that
confronting an oil worker is very little different than say, a writer. Itʼs just a ques-
tion of language. As a matter of fact, the people I have photographed for this book
seemed more generous with their selves, less guarded, often easier to see.
N.W.: But not anybody is a good subject for you. How do you choose your sub-
was when I painted her but thatʼs how she will be sooner or later.” jects?
R.A.: Thatʼs pretty grand of him. On the other hand, now that she is dead, visually R.A.: Very few people are suitable subjects for me. In the same way that not every-
that is all she is. It is a terrible responsibility for a photographer. The subject was one looks like a Modigliani or would have been a correct model for Julia Cameron.
there — the subject can never say — that is not me. It is even worse in the case of Itʼs a difficult question because I donʼt formalize these things. I am interested in con-
photojournalism, when the photograph is taken without permission. At least I ask, nections between people of remote experience, in similarities that are unexpected,

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unexplained. When you see this new book, you will see a man, a worker in
Colorado, who has qualities exactly like James Galanos. Galanos is a dress
designer in Beverly Hills who dressed the wife of President Reagan. The
man in Colorado is a factory worker who wraps packages. That facinates
me. If you look at the portraits of the “Chicago 7,” you will find similarities
to The Mission Council. Paradox, irony, contradiction — these interest me
in a photograph. Contradications within one person: the contrast possibly
between the gentleness and the delicacy of the hands of a subject and the
suspicion and the lack of trust on his face.
N.W.: There is also a contradiction in your work. Your fashion pictures
and then your portraits, which seem to show a more tragic side of life.
R.A.: I donʼt think one is at all a reaction to the other, which is a view
sometimes held about Penn, Arbus and myself: that the serious, or if you
want, the “tragic” quality of our portraits is a reaction to the artificial de-
mands of fashion. I think there is a tendency to categorize photographers
with assumptions that would never be made of writers. If an author writes
a comedy or a tragedy and then an essay or is politically concerned, no on
questions. No one asks why a philosopher writes a novel or a poem, or why
Picasso did ballet costumes. That generosity is not extended to fashion pho-
tographers. Iʼve had to deal with that always — less now — but still.
Fashion photography is not an art that can grow indefinitely. It is con-
stantly taking and dealing with the surface of things and that doesnʼt attract
me anymore. When I was young, my needs as an artist were exactly the
needs of the magazine I worked for — Harperʼs Bazaar. They published
what I wanted to express. (That went on for 20 years — Embarrassing!) At
a certain point, the necessities of fashion magazines were no longer mine,
no longer interesting.
As a commercial photographer, fashion is a necessary part of my com-
mercial existence. I find it easy. It underwrites and supports my life and
other work that I prefer to do.
N.W.: To be a photographer — was it that most obvious way to earn
money in the early fifties?
R.A.: My father wanted me to be a businessman because he had suffered
terribly as a Russian Jew in New York City at the turn of the century. He had
a terrible life as a child, one of six children deserted by his father, sent to an
orphan asylum, he had a tragic quality and an exaggerated sense of danger.
He wanted me to be prepared for what he calls The Battle in the ways that
he felt one had to be prepared: through education, physical strength and
money.

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 I am a complete composite of my mother and father. She began to
be a sculptress at 75, working with granite and marble. My mother
loved the arts, was politically active, and always encouraged me
to be an artist. She was and is completely supportive. During the
depression she stole lilacs. She says about artists, “He is the real
thing” or “Heʼs not the real thing” and thatʼs that.
Anyway, photography was the only thing I could do. I have been
a photographer since at least the age of 13. My family was in the
business of fashion and my parents subscribed to Harperʼs Bazaar,
Vogue, and Vanity Fair when I was a child. I saw fashion photog-
raphy and theater portraits by Steichen, Munkacsi and Man Ray in
each issue and I began to imitate them by photographing my little
sister. She was very, very beautiful, two years younger than I. Her
beauty was the event of our family and the destruction of her life.
She was treated as if there was no one inside her perfect skin, as if
she was simply her long throat, her deep brown eyes. I think she
believed she existed only as skin, and hair, and a beautiful body.
Interestingly enough, I had not looked at a photograph of her in
30 years, and only last week opened a package of my earliest pic-
tures, taken when I was an adolescent. Every family thinks their
daughter and son are the most beautiful children in the world, but
my sister Louise, (I photographed her from 14 to 18), was truly
a world class beauty, and I never knew it until last week. What I
discovered was that she was the prototype of what I considered to
be beautiful in my early years as a fashion photographer. All my
first models: Dorian Leigh, Elise Daniels, Carmen, Marella Agnelli,
Audrey Hepburn, were brunettes and had fine noses, long throats,
oval faces. They were all memories of my sister. My sense of what
was beautiful was established very early through the way in which
I experienced her.
N.W.: Where is she now?
R.A.: She is dead. She died in a mental institution at the age of
40. She withdrew completely in her late adolesence.
N.W.: You mean she was killed by her beauty?
R.A.: Depersonalized, maybe. Destroyed, possibly; I think really
by the power of her beauty. It is as isolating as genius, or deformity.
Unlike genius, it is one of the qualities that removes you from the
world, but offers no real compensation. I have always been aware
of a relationship betweeen madness and beauty. Does this help to

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‘I never felt that anything I explain some of what appear to be
ever did was good enough contradictions in my work? Itʼs only
and frankly, a large part of me one part. It had nothing to do with the
still thinks exactly that way discipline of work, and other things,
about everything I do — it is but you will find if you look to the por-
not good enough — nothing is traits, that connection. A possibility of
ever even near good enough. failure and danger and poetry in life
But that’s not a regret. I just — and the close line.
feel that I know more than I N.W.: Since 40 years, you have pho-
can put into my work.’ tographed painters, politicians, artists,
workers, famous and unfamous people.
What feeds your curiosity for people?
R.A.: I donʼt think analytic explanations suffice but there is a little bit of truth in
everything, in Freud, in Pavlov, in genetics, in enviroment. I grew up with a first
cousin, two years older than I. I was deeply in love with her from the age of 4 until I
was 18. It was only with her that I could breathe freely. We were precocious from the
start. When the Cocteau movie “Les Enfants Terribles” came out, we knew we were
those children. We saw it over and over. Our feelings for each other were so intense,
so forbidden so conspiritorial. I knew for myself — I canʼt speak for her — that if I
was ever to complete myself, grow up and out into the world, we had to shatter our
perfect hothouse. In all the years that a young man first experiences life apart from
the family, I knew only one person. I think my entire character was formed through
that powerful relationship. And my life has gone on, one person at a time.
N.W.: This relationship with one person at a time is replayed in your studio, when
you do a portrait?
R.A.: Oh yes! Intensely — but in photography it is an unearned intensity. For
example, I have never become a friend — or very rarely — of anyone I have pho-
tographed. I would never, for many many years, enter a room after photographing a
celebrated person and assume that if he were there, he would acknowledge me. The
kind of embarassing intensity of these peculiar intimacies and needs, the needs of
the subject to give something to the camera and to me, and my need to take that in
order to express myself — is complicated and unearned. I have never felt that I had
the right to presume that there was anything but the picture between us. Itʼs less than
an hour, and itʼs over — completely.
N.W.: Havenʼt you ever been seduced by some of these people?
R.A.: As my book Portraits was being completed, there were certain artists whose
work had affected me, whom I had not photographed, and one of them was Jean
Renoir. Renoir lived in Beverly Hills and I went to him. His home looked like ev-
erything Iʼd always thought a home should be. It looked like south of France. It

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 didnʼt look like Beverly Hills. There were flowers in and out of the rooms and
sunshine coming through the windows. And a long table in the middle of the
room. A long table at the center of a house has always had great meaning for
me. When I arrived, I was shown to his bedroom. He was naked, being helped
to dress, completely unembarassed by my presence. He was old and quite sick
at the time and he walked with difficulty, with a walker. There was something
so moving about his face and about his life and his work and what he stood for.
He was one of the last people I felt in awe of. When the sitting was over, (in
those days I worked with incredible intensity, I mean my heart would pound
out of control while I photographed), Renoir said, “Wonʼt you join us?”
So I sat at the table and some friends arrived with vodka and a Sunday cake
and Renoir sat down. Behind him was a portrait of him as a child painted by
his father and the potteries he had made as a child guided by his father.
A young Czechoslovakian director who was there visiting started to talk
with Renoir about Film. What happened to me used to happen to me very often
— I froze, I couldnʼt speak or think. I felt inadequate. I thought — what can I
say or contribute to anything that happens at this table. Well, actually nothing
so grand was happening. I considered myself very good at disguising my feel-
ings and I knew there was no necessity for me to speak. I could legitimately
be a quiet person. But I was paralyzed inside. Smiling, trying to appear com-
fortable, thinking — what right do I have to be at this table? I came to do my
photograph, I should leave. I am not a friend of the Renoirs, this is Sunday.
Renoir stood to go to the bathroom and I used that occasion to say goodbye
to everyone. As I walked to the front door, he came our of his bedroom with his
walker which sort of blocked my way. And we were stuck there, in the narrow
hall, in this confrontation. I extended my hand and said, “Monsiour Renoir,
thank you very much for allowing me to photograph you.” And he looked into
my eyes and spoke, and Iʼll never forget his words, “It is not what is said that
matters, itʼs the feelings that cross the table.”
I froze my face. I walked to the car and wept. Imagine a man in his eighties,
sick as he was, knowing what was happening to me at the table, and to care,
and to say it. Well, thatʼs my kind of standard for human behavior. To be able
to be that present in each moment. The quality of paying attention that he had,
and then the compassion. I think there is not much more to life than that story:
to be that age, surrounded by your fatherʼs works of art, to have created your
own, to live in a house with sunshine falling through the windows, and a wife,
and a jar of vodka with spirals of lemon rind in it, and friends and your own
son who has become a teacher and his children sitting with the grownups, on
Sunday — and to still pay that kind of attention to a stranger.

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 N.W.: Do you have any regrets?
R.A.: I never felt that anything I ever did was good enough and frankly,
a large part of me still thinks exactly that way about everything I do — it is
not good enough — nothing is ever even near good enough. But thatʼs not
a regret. I just feel that I know more than I can put into my work.
N.W.: Does it make you suffer?
R.A.: No. Not that. It makes me work.
N.W.: What makes you anxious?
R.A.: The unexplainable shifts of my feelings. From moment to moment
I can shift from someone who thinks he can deal with everything to some-
one who canʼt think. It has nothing to do with reality. I like to believe itʼs
chemical. I used to think there was a Freudian answer. (He laughs). What I
do know about myself is that I am best in intense short encounters. I mean
the way in which making pictures is very intense and short, compared to
writing.
Everything I do, it seems to me, has passion about it and then suddenly
the drop and then withdrawal, which is not necessarily depression. It can be
planes or sleep or doing puzzles, but I have to pull back. I am not capable
of living on my most intense level for a long period of time. I think I might
crack. Thatʼs probably why I still do a bit of fashion photography — to
relieve the tension.
N.W.: Did you ever feel it would have been possible for you to become
insane?
R.A.: Maybe, when I was young, yes. At certain periods when there
were real life pressures, rites that seemed impossible to meet, I thought: I
am not going to make it. But I always had the ability to escape into reality,
into work. Many things have called to me in my life, many things in all ar-
eas of my life, and they have found their proper home in my photographs.
N.W.: But not on your
face. You look very serene.
‘Paradox, irony, R.A.: Itʼs because, per-
contradiction — these haps, the storm approaches
interest me in a photograph. my pictures instead of my
Contradications within one face. Thatʼs a funny thought.
person: the contrast possibly (He laughs.)
between the gentleness and
the delicacy of the hands of a
subject and the suspicion and
the lack of trust on his face.’

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