Richard Avedon 1923–2004

I recently visited the Richard Avedon exhibition at the International Centre of Photography Museum in NYC.

The exhibition is the most comprehensive exploration to date of Avedon's fashion photography during his long career at Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Working closely with The Richard Avedon Foundation, ICP curator Carol Squiers and guest curator Vince Aletti present new scholarship on the evolution and extraordinary, ongoing impact of his work. The exhibition features 175 works by Richard Avedon, spanning his entire career, and includes vintage and edition prints, contact sheets, and original magazines.

Richard Avedon  revolutionized fashion photography starting in the post-World War II era and redefined the role of the fashion photographer. Anticipating many of the cultural cross-fertilizations that have occurred between high art, commercial art, fashion, advertising, and pop culture in the last twenty years, he created spirited, imaginative photographs that showed fashion and the modern woman in a new light. He shook up the chilly, static formulas of the fashion photograph and by 1950 was the most imitated American editorial photographer. Injecting a forthright, American energy into a business that had been dominated by Europeans, Avedon's stylistic innovations continue to influence photographers around the world.