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.
The Beatles Portfolio - Offset and Lithograph by Richard Avedon - 1967
By Richard Avedon
Located in Roma, IT
A complete portfolio of four individual psychedelic portraits of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, accompanied by the composite poster uniting all four i...
Lithograph, Offset
Richard Avedon Original 1967 poster featuring John Lennon - The Beatles
By Richard Avedon
Located in PARIS, FR
Original 1967 poster featuring John Lennon, one of the iconic members of The Beatles, immortalized by the legendary photographer Richard Avedon, is a timel...
Paper
Richard Avedon Original 1967 poster featuring Ringo Starr - The Beatles
By Richard Avedon
Located in PARIS, FR
The original 1967 poster featuring Ringo Starr, one of the legendary members of The Beatles, captured by the renowned photographer Richard Avedon, stands as an iconic piece of pop cu...
Paper
$1,189
Richard Avedon Original 1967 poster featuring Paul McCartney - The Beatles
By Richard Avedon
Located in PARIS, FR
The original 1967 poster featuring Paul McCartney, a luminary member of The Beatles, captured by the legendary photographer Richard Avedon, stands as a sig...
Paper
$795
H 24 in W 20 in
Afghan Girl iconic poster: Sharbat Gula, Pakistan (Hand Signed by Steve McCurry)
By Steve McCurry
Located in New York, NY
Steve McCurry Sharbat Gula, Afghan Girl, Pakistan (Hand Signed), 1984 Offset Lithograph poster Hand signed by the photographer in black felt pen on the front 24 × 20 inches Unframed...
Felt Pen, Lithograph, Offset
$3,350
H 39.97 in W 25.01 in D 0.04 in
BOAC Speedbird Routes Across the World – Original Vintage British Airline Poster
By Harold Foster
Located in Zurich, CH
Original Vintage Airline Poster by Harold Foster. He created several designs commissioned by the British Overseas Airways Corporation ...
Paper
Rhodotorulic Acid. Woodcut in colors. Signed.
By Damien Hirst
Located in Paris, FR
HIRST Damien (1965 - ) Rhodotorulic Acid. Woodcut in colors. Signed. Provenance : DTR Modern Gallery, New York. About Damien Hirst (Artist) British artist Damien Hirst is widely considered the enfant terrible of contemporary art. He is the most prominent of the so-called Young British Artists, or YBAs, a group, largely composed of Hirst’s classmates at Goldsmiths, in London, that began exhibiting together in warehouses and factories after 1988 and is known for the use of unconventional materials and “shock tactics.” In the 1990s, Hirst said, “I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it.” And indeed, he is notorious for piquing critics and baffling the public with such pieces as his signature glass vitrines containing dead sheep or sharks in formaldehyde, and his diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God. Working primarily in sculpture, Hirst takes after French modernist master Marcel Duchamp in his use of ready-made objects and materials, which he combines to ironic effect. He often creates in series, as with The Cure (Violet) and The Cure (Turquoise), both from 2014, which are among several pill paintings...
Paper
$13,700
H 48.82 in W 36.42 in D 0.04 in
Original Vintage Secession Poster celebrating the emperor's jubilee
Located in Zurich, CH
Original Vintage Poster by the Austrian artist Ferdinand Ludwig Graf, a member of the Hagenbund. This Viennese artist association moved as soon a...
Paper
The Agam Passover Haggadah - Gold Edition
By Yaacov Agam
Located in Jerusalem, IL
A Passover Haggadah, made by the artist Yaacov Agam. 58 original serigraphs, pulled by hand on Rivs 270 Gr. (Arjomarie-Prioux) by Atelier Arcay in Paris, 1985. All color separations ...
Paper, Color
$2,500
H 8 in W 8 in
Phil, Pop print Portrait of Philip Glass, pencil numbered ed of 1000, w/envelope
By Chuck Close
Located in New York, NY
Chuck Close Phil, 1976 Limited Edition rubber stamp print on Strathmore 3-Ply Paper. Pencil numbered from the edition of 1000 on the verso. Artist's printed copyright name verso. Acc...
Lithograph, Offset
$42,500
H 26.78 in W 34.65 in D 0.04 in
Bouteilles – lithograph, hand-signed and numbered
By Le Corbusier
Located in Zurich, CH
Together with "Les Musiciennes" one of the largest and most sought after lithographs by Le Corbusier – a purist still-life –, printed by Mourlot on Arches after a collage by LC. Pr...
Paper
untitled
By Richard Howard Hunt
Located in New York, NY
untitled 2023 lithograph by Richard Hunt. Published by Procuniar Workshop, this stone lithograph is signed (lower right recto) and numbered (lower l...
Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Lithograph
$7,100
H 50.4 in W 35.44 in D 0.04 in
General Dynamics, Convair 880, World's Fastest Jetliner – Original Poster
By Erik Nitsche
Located in Zurich, CH
A poster belonging to Erik Nitsche's third series for General Dynamics, promoting its Convair Company. Founded 1952, General Dynamics hired Nitsche a...
Paper
$3,900
H 50.4 in W 35.44 in D 0.04 in
General Dynamics, Exploring the Universe, Sub-Atomic Worlds – Original Poster
By Erik Nitsche
Located in Zurich, CH
A poster belonging to Erik Nitsche's second series for General Dynamics, promoting its nuclear research. Founded 1952, General Dynamics hired Nitsche as Art Director – a Swiss (1908 – 1998) educated at the Collège Classique in his birth town Lausanne and at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich. 1934 he emigrated to the United States and became an incredibly versatile graphic designer whose work became exemplary modernist. General Dynamics for its part focused on – amongst others – aerodynamics, aerospace, electronics and nuclear power. So here the company had a problem: Only a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki it wasn’t exactly the simplest thing to explore nuclear energy and not to be suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. The International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy 1955 in Geneva was a great opportunity to be seen as a provider of peaceful technology. The guys in charge chose Erik Nitsche to communicate this message. He created four poster series. Atoms for Peace was the first consisting of eleven posters. The second was made for the Conference 1958; these posters are titled Exploring the Universe and represent different aspects of technological research. The third series promoted General Dynamics’ departments. The last series of six smaller posters...
Paper
$39,300
H 26.78 in W 38.59 in D 0.04 in
Les Musiciennes – lithograph, hand-signed and numbered
By Le Corbusier
Located in Zurich, CH
Together with "Bouteilles" one of the largest and most sought after lithographs by Le Corbusier, printed by Mourlot on Arches after a collage by LC....
Paper
$5,500
H 11 in W 8.5 in
Kehinde Wiley - Passing/Posing Paintings & Faux Chapel, 18 prints in bespoke box
By Kehinde Wiley
Located in New York, NY
Kehinde Wiley Passing/Posing, Paintings & Faux Chapel (suite of 18 separate prints), 2004 Portfolio of 18 Separate Color offset lithographs in original black paste board portfoli...
Ink, Mixed Media, Board, Laid Paper, Lithograph, Offset
Sold
H 26.78 in W 18.51 in
Richard Avedon Original 1967 poster featuring George Harrison The Beatles
By Richard Avedon
Located in PARIS, FR
Original 1967 poster featuring George Harrison, an iconic member of The Beatles, immortalized by the visionary photographer Richard Avedon, stands as a rem...
Paper
Sold
H 24.02 in W 35.44 in
hand-signed 1981 poster of Richard Avedon Nastassja Kinski and the serpent
By Richard Avedon
Located in PARIS, FR
In the world of photography and fashion, Richard Avedon remains an iconic figure whose work continues to inspire and captivate audiences. One of his most celebrated pieces, this hand...
Linen, Paper
Sold
H 40 in W 25 in
Richard Avedon Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War (Vietnam protest poster)
By Richard Avedon
Located in NEW YORK, NY
Richard Avedon, "Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War?," Vintage original protest poster, 1969 A famous 1969 Richard Avedon illustrated poster against the Vietnam War. Avedon's picture depicts a handsome soldier wearing a formal US Army uniform colored bright red (symbolic for blood). The soldier is seen holding a white dove, over the caption, 'Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War?' Commissioned by The Student Mobilization Committee, the poster became a effective anti-war rallying device of the late 1960s. Off-set lithograph in colors 25 x 40 inches Some signs of minor handling; otherwise very good Plate signed on lower left Collections Whitney Museum of American Art - Daniel Wolf Collection of Protest Posters Richard Avedon’s dynamic, stylized portraits helped bridge the worlds of fashion and fine art photography. Avedon captured his staged subjects on black-and-white film, sometimes in motion. He turned his probing, intimate gaze on both everyday civilians and cultural icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Malcolm X. Avedon served as a photographer in the military before working as both a freelancer and staff photographer for publications including Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, Life, and others. While he is widely known for his commercial and editorial practices, Avedon also exhibited widely in cities including New York, Paris, and London. Throughout his lifetime, he published a number of books of collected photography. On the secondary market, Avedon’s work has sold in excess of $1 million. Related Categories Richard Avedon Beatles.
Lithograph, Offset
1993 Richard Avedon 'An Autobiography' Book
By Richard Avedon
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Paper Size: 14.25 x 11.5 inches ( 36.195 x 29.21 cm ) Image Size: 14.25 x 11.5 inches ( 36.195 x 29.21 cm ) Framed: NoCondition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Addition...
Offset
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H 24.5 in W 35.75 in
Richard Avedon-Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent-24.5" x 35.75"-Poster-1981
By Richard Avedon
Located in Brooklyn, NY
This photograph is of Natassja Kinski, the German-born model and actress. Kinski gained acclaim both through her active acting career, as well as through her relationship with Roman ...
Offset
Sold
H 40 in W 25 in
Richard Avedon Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War (Vietnam protest poster)
By Richard Avedon
Located in NEW YORK, NY
Richard Avedon, "Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War?," Vintage original protest poster, 1969 A famous 1969 Richard Avedon illustrated poster against the Vietnam War. Avedon's picture depicts a handsome soldier wearing a formal US Army uniform colored bright red (symbolic for blood). The soldier is seen holding a white dove, over the caption, 'Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War?' Commissioned by The Student Mobilization Committee, the poster became a effective anti-war rallying device of the late 1960s. Off-set lithograph in colors 25 x 40 inches Some signs of minor handling; otherwise very good Plate signed on lower left Collections Whitney Museum of American Art - Daniel Wolf Collection of Protest Posters Related Categories Richard Avedon Beatles.
Lithograph, Offset
Sold
H 40 in W 25 in D 0.1 in
Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War (vintage Vietnam protest poster)
By Richard Avedon
Located in NEW YORK, NY
Richard Avedon, "Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War?," Vintage original protest poster, 1969 A famous 1969 Richard Avedon illustrated poster against the Vietnam War. Avedon's picture depicts a handsome soldier wearing a formal US Army uniform...
Offset
Sold
H 40 in W 25 in
Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War (vintage Vietnam protest poster)
By Richard Avedon
Located in NEW YORK, NY
Richard Avedon, "Who Has a Better Right to Oppose the War?," Vintage original protest poster, 1969 A famous 1969 Richard Avedon illustrated poster against the Vietnam War. Avedon's ...
Lithograph