Richard AvedonMarilyn Monroe for "Some Like It Hot, shooting", USA, 19581950s
1950s
About the Item
- Creator:Richard Avedon (1923-2004, American)
- Creation Year:1950s
- Dimensions:Height: 9.73 in (24.7 cm)Diameter: 7.49 in (19 cm)
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Cologne, DE
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU132213034822
Richard Avedon
A while back, Richard Avedon had a confession to make. “I hate cameras,” said the man who revolutionized fashion and portrait photography. “If I could only work with my eyes alone!”
Yet Avedon’s photos seem to do just that — they remove the distance the camera lens creates to make you feel that you are right there beside his subjects.
Born in New York City in 1923, Avedon had a stern father, an artistic mother and a beautiful, but troubled, sister. At 18, he wanted to be a poet. And the slight, 5’7” dreamer didn’t lack confidence — or a sense of drama. “I know my drifting will not prove a loss / For mine is a rolling stone that has gathered moss,” he wrote in 1941.
A year later, Avedon joined the Merchant Marines, where he spent his World War II years shooting ID photos of new recruits. “I must have taken pictures of 100,000 faces before it occurred to me I was becoming a photographer,” he later recalled.
After demobilization in 1944, Avedon shot fashion pictures for the tony Manhattan department store Bonwit Teller and studied with Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary art director of Harper’s Bazaar. By 1945, his work was appearing in Junior Bazaar.
“His first photographs for us were technically very bad,” Brodovitch later recalled. “But they were not snapshots. . . . Those first pictures of his had freshness and individuality, and they showed enthusiasm and a willingness to take chances.”
Who else was willing to take chances? Brodovitch and Carmel Snow, editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar, who soon sent the young talent to fashion’s sacred capital, Paris.
The postwar years were hard in Paris. When Avedon first arrived there, in 1946, it was with an explicit directive from Snow. “Dick was tasked with this idea that he was there to rebuild Paris,” explains Martin. In restoring the energy and excitement around Paris, Avedon imbued it with some of his own.
Avedon’s models jumped, twirled, leapt over puddles and they smiled. Like Avedon himself, they rarely stood still. While he wasn’t the first to use action in fashion photography (in the 1930s, Martin Munkacsi and Toni Frissell began creating fashion images of women engaged in sporty scenarios), Avedon was the first to pair such vitality with women wearing couture.
Character and spirit became la mode. Dovima’s graceful silhouette juxtaposed against the wrinkled heft of two shackled elephants. Dorian Leigh laughing and embracing a bicycle racer. Suzy Parker roller skating across the Place de la Concorde. Sunny Harnett and her cool gaze just daring the roulette table — and every man in the room — not to do her bidding. There was always a narrative in an Avedon mise en scène — whether the background was elaborately staged or stark, the model’s job had forever changed from posing, to acting.
Of course, Avedon did not limit himself to fashion photography. The little boy who once collected autographs grew up to create the most iconic portraits of the 20th century, many of these were included in an exhibition at Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York, in 2017.
A 1958 New Yorker profile noted that even though Avedon’s portraits immortalized cultural elites such as Truman Capote, Elsa Maxwell and Charles Laughton, the qualities that most interested the photographer were “advanced age, physical debility, ugliness, or the pathos underlying the surface insouciance.” Yet “none of Avedon’s subjects seem to resent this kind of treatment . . . being selected to sit for one of his Harper’s Bazaar portraits ranks as an accolade.”
Over the next 40-plus years of his career, his iconic portraiture never lost its force; although at times, his unvarnished truth felt cruel.
But Avedon was a creator, not an observer, and he made no apologies for this. The sitter and the photographer “have separate ambitions for the image,” he wrote in 1985. “His need to plead his case probably goes as deep as my need to plead mine, but the control is with me.”
Find original Richard Avedon photography on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Cologne, Germany
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 7 days of delivery.
- JFK speaking - John F. Kennedy Election campaign 1960By Rolf GillhausenLocated in Cologne, DEBorn in Cologne in 1922, died in Hamburg in 2004. Apprenticeship as a machinist from 1937, then studied engineering (not completed due to the war). Served in the war and imprisoned....Category
1960s Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Cologne, Germany 1935, Printed LaterBy Karl Heinrich LämmelLocated in Cologne, DEOne of the photographers at Mauritius Publishing based in Berlin was Karl Heinrich Lämmel. Born on 30 July 1910 in Riesa, Saxony, he has been missing since April 1945. In the thirtie...Category
1930s Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsBlack and White
- Cologne, Germany 1935, Printed LaterBy Karl Heinrich LämmelLocated in Cologne, DEOne of the photographers at Mauritius Publishing based in Berlin was Karl Heinrich Lämmel. Born on 30 July 1910 in Riesa, Saxony, he has been missing since April 1945. In the thirtie...Category
1930s Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsBlack and White
- Frankfurt, Germany 1935, Printed LaterBy Karl Heinrich LämmelLocated in Cologne, DEOne of the photographers at Mauritius Publishing based in Berlin was Karl Heinrich Lämmel. Born on 30 July 1910 in Riesa, Saxony, he has been missing since April 1945. In the thirtie...Category
1930s Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsBlack and White
- Cologne, Germany 1935, Printed LaterBy Karl Heinrich LämmelLocated in Cologne, DEOne of the photographers at Mauritius Publishing based in Berlin was Karl Heinrich Lämmel. Born on 30 July 1910 in Riesa, Saxony, he has been missing since April 1945. In the thirtie...Category
1930s Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsBlack and White
- Hungary uprising in back a fire with a poster of Istvan Dobi, 1956.By Rolf GillhausenLocated in Cologne, DEHungary uprising in back a fire with a poster of Istvan Dobi, 1956. Keywords: Hungary; Hungarian; people; crowd; revolution; 1956; 1950s; city; fire; burning; uprising; Istvan Dobi ...Category
1950s Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Vintage Silver Gelatin Photograph Jacques Lipchitz Bronze Sculpture Photo SignedBy Adolph StudlyLocated in Surfside, FLAdolph Studly, Swiss born American photographer. His work is kept in the Photographic Archive at The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. He was known for his gallery photographs of works by artists represented primarily by the Buchholz gallery, Curt Valentin, and Stephen Radich Galleries. Artists whose work he shot include Max Beckmann, Francis Bacon, Chaim Soutine, Allan Kaprow, Clyfford Still, Georges Braque, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Georges Rouault. He worked with Louis H. Dreyer, the pre-eminent architecture photographer in New York City. Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, 1891-1973, was born in Lithuania and came of age in Paris during the early 20th century, where he was active in the avante-garde community of Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, Chaim Soutine, and Juan Gris. Art historian H. H. Arnason, who ranked Lipchitz with Picasso and Marc Chagall, wrote, "Lipchitz, as a pure sculptor, is ...unquestionably one of the greatest sculptors of this century." The architect Philip Johnson asked Lipchitz to make a wall sculpture to be placed on the brick chimney over a fireplace of a guest house owned by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III on West 53rd Street in New York. Lipchitz decided to develop the piece from his Pegasus designs and call it Birth of the Muses in honor of the Rockefellers' interest in the arts. In 1950 he completed the work as a bronze relief five feet high. It was installed as planned and later was acquired by Lincoln Center. He participated in the Flight portfolio...Category
1940s Modern Abstract Photography
MaterialsPhotographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
- Caddy TailfinBy Robert FarberLocated in New York, NYCaddy Tailfin Archival pigment print on canvas 60 x 96 inches Edition of 10 AMERICANA "From rural Montana to the Manhattan skyline at dawn, from a New Mexico cowboy...Category
1980s American Modern Figurative Photography
MaterialsCanvas, Archival Pigment
- Andreas Feininger Monumental B&W Photograph, 1951By Andreas FeiningerLocated in Washington, DCLarge and wonderful B & W photograph by American photographer Andreas Feininger (1906-1999). Photograph is of a gorilla rib cage. Printed in 1951, it measures 8ft. 10 in. x 10ft. Photograph is attached to linen and can be rolled for easy storage and shipping. Feininger was born in Paris, France, the eldest son of Julia Berg, a German Jew, and the American painter and art educator Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956). His paternal grandparents were the German violinist Karl Feininger (1844–1922) and the American singer Elizabeth Feininger, (née Lutz), who was also of German descent. His younger brother was the painter and photographer T. Lux Feininger (1910–2011) In 1908 the Feininger family moved to Berlin, and in 1919 to Weimar, where Lyonel Feininger took up the post of Master of the Printing Workshop at the newly formed Bauhaus art school.[2] Andreas left school at 16, in 1922, to study at the Bauhaus; he graduated as a cabinetmaker in April 1925. Afterwards he studied architecture, initially at the Staatliche Bauschule Weimar (State Architectural College, Weimar) and later at the Staatliche Bauschule Zerbst. (Zerbst is a city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, about 20 km from Dessau, where the Bauhaus moved to in 1926.) The Feininger family moved to Dessau with the Bauhaus. In addition to continuing his architectural studies in Zerbst, Andreas developed an interest in photography and was given guidance by neighbour and Bauhaus teacher László Moholy-Nagy.[3] In 1936, he gave up architecture and moved to Sweden, where he focused on photography. In advance of World War II, in 1939, Feininger immigrated to the U.S. where he established himself as a freelance photographer. In 1943 he joined the staff of Life magazine, an association that lasted until 1962. Feininger became famous for his photographs of New York...Category
1950s Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsLinen, Photographic Paper
- Ozzy Osbourne and Andy WarholBy Andy WarholLocated in Belgravia, London, LondonUnique Gelatin Silver Print Paper size: 8 x 10 inches Framed size: 23.75 x 25.25 inches Provenance: Private collection, New York This work originates from the Estate of Andy Warho...Category
20th Century Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- Simon Le BonBy Andy WarholLocated in Belgravia, London, LondonGelatin Silver Print Paper size: 10 x 8 inches Framed size: 26.5 x 22.5 inches Dated 'Apr 29 1982' on the reverse Provenance: Private collection, New York This work originates fr...Category
20th Century Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsSilver Gelatin
- JR MIGRANTS, 28 MILLIMÈTRES: WOMEN ARE HEROES. Street Art DesignBy JR (aka Jean René)Located in Madrid, Madrid28 MILLIMÈTRES: WOMEN ARE HEROES. ACTION IN KIBERA SLUM, "INTO THE WILD", KENYA (2009) Date of creation: 2019 Medium: Digital print on Canadian maple wood Edition: 500 Size: 80 x 20 ...Category
2010s Modern Black and White Photography
MaterialsWood, Maple, Digital Pigment