Show Spotlights Avedon's Melancholy Fashion Genius

Major retrospective looks at photographer's legacy
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted May 14, 2009 9:37 AM CDT
Show Spotlights Avedon's Melancholy Fashion Genius
British model Jean Shrimpton poses for a shoot while American photographer Richard Avedon lies on the floor, taking a camera from an assistant, in 1965.   (Getty Images)

For 60 years Richard Avedon was the quintessential fashion photographer, and his black-and-white images established an ideal of beauty for a generation. Now, 5 years after his death, the International Center of Photography in New York is mounting a retrospective of Avedon’s fashion work. For Times critic Cathy Horyn, his career was a “plea for beauty,” even if beauty “had an element of tragedy.”

Avedon learned to take pictures in the merchant marine during World War II; his collaborations with editor Diana Vreeland at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue produced legendary photos, but a melancholy pervades much of his work—perhaps linked to the death of his sister, a beautiful woman committed to a mental institution. For Avedon, Horyn writes, “beauty could be intoxicating but, equally, impoverishing to the soul.” (More International Center of Photography stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X