Richard Avedon

1. Richard Avedon

2. His purpose His Purpose was to take pictures of the fashion world.

3. Gallery

4. Her body language shows that she is standing up, she also looks cold. Her facial expressions show that something bad might of just happened, she Is looking down which tells us she is unhappy. The black and white effect also shows that she looks really pale and cold. The plain grey background helps the audience focus on the main character. The rule of thirds are really good, she is in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd rule of thirds, which tells the audience that she is important. I think that what she is wearing tells us that she has been somewhere important, maybe been rejected or something bad has happened.

5. Early Life Avedon was born in New York City, to a Jewish family. He was the son of Jacob Israel Avedon, a Russian-born immigrant who started a successful retail dress business on Fifth Avenue called Avedon’s Fifth Avenue. His mother Anna, came from a family that owned a dress manufacturing business. She had encouraged his love of fashion and art. At the age of 12, Richard Avedon’s interests sparked in the photography world use his family’s Kodak Box Brownie to feed his curiosity of the world around him but also as a means to retreat from his personal life. His father was a critical and remote disciplinarian who insisted that physical strength, education and money prepared one for the world. His younger sister Louise became his first muse as she was a beautiful subject to capture on film.

6. His Career In 1944, Avedon began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly discovered by Alexey Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. Lillian Bassman also promoted Avedon's career at Harper's. In 1945 his photographs began appearing in Junior Bazaar and, a year later, in Bazaar itself. In 1946, Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and Life. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar. From 1950 he also contributed photographs to Life, Look and Graphis and in 1952 became Staff Editor and photographer for Theatre Arts Magazine. Avedon did not conform to the standard technique of taking fashion photographs, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camera. Instead, Avedon showed models full of emotion, smiling, laughing, and, many times, in action. Towards the end of the 1950s he became dissatisfied with daylight photography and open air locations and so turned to studio photography, using strobe lighting.