Richard Avedon
Discription
Richard Avedon was born in 1923 in New York City. He became interested in photography at the age of 12 and joined YMHA camera club. He went to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, were he edited his schools magazine Magpie with James Baldwin. In 1942 he joined the armed forces in World War 2, serving as photographers mate 2nd class in the U.S merchant Marine.
Avedon served for two years and started to work as a professional photographer. He started with creating fashion photos and studied with art director Alexey Brodovitch. When he was 22 he began working freelance and also with Haper's Bazaar. He win became the lead photographer for Harper's Bazaar. Avedon was fascinated by the way photography could suggest the personality in his subjects.
Avedon quit Haper's Bazaar after criticism of his collab with models of color. He joined Vogue and worked for over 20 years. He also ran a successful commercial studio were he mixed the line between art and commercial in photography.
Avedon passed away on October the 1st 2004 while on an assignment. He has a foundation called The Ricgard Avedon Foundation.
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| Thoughts: The subject is holding a balancing pose in this photo but there is no motion blur coming through so Avedon must have used a Shutter Speed of around 1/100 or less. |
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| Thoughts: The subject looks like she has been caught mid action, there is no motion blur, this picture has really frozen the moment I think Avedon has used a Shutter speed of 1/125 or less for this photo. |
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| Thoughts: The subject looks like he is stay quite still for this photograph I think Avedon has used a Shutter speed of around 1/60. |
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| Thoughts: This photo looks like it has been taken with a beauty light with a Shutter Speed of around 1/80. The is no movement in this photo. |
My thoughts:
His portraits seem to all be taken with a plain backdrop maybe paper or cloth. They are taken in black and white and look like they have been cut straight from some sort of film. A lot of subjects in the photographs look as if they are un ready to be photographed a lot of them looking off to the side or and the camera but not smiling. A lot of Avendons pictures are changed with lighting, some times he uses harsh lighting to bring out the wrinkles and expression lines on his subjects faces and in other photographs he uses beauty lights to make the subjects skin look very luminous (manly woman). I think this tells alot about how he feels about the person he is photographing and how he thinks there personality is. Alot of his black and white portrait work the subject is in the center of the rule of thirds or slightly off center. Most of the negative space in the portraits are around the sides of the subjects and very minimal if any negative space about the subjects head and the top of the rule of thirds.
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| Thoughts: These two photographs look as if they were taken in a very unguarded moment. There is alot of negative space in the photograph. |
My recreation:
I have tried to photograph the subject in a similar position to Avedons photos above, the negative space (ignoring the picture board in the background) on either side of the subject is very similar.Things to work on:
I needed to direct the subjects gaze to match Avedons above subject. Avedon's subject was gazing closer to his general direction, also I have too much negative space above the subects head.Sources:
www.avedonfoundation.org/
erickimphotography.com/blog/2014/09/26/5-lessons-richard-avedon-taught-street-photography/
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