My Favorite Photographer: Richard Avedon

My favorite photographer is Richard Avedon, a portraitist and fashion photographer. He's worked with so many influental people, such as: Marilyn Monroe, Cher, Audrey Hepburn, Maryl Streep and so much more. He also has a common thread in his pictures. Most of them are black and white, but I feel like it adds so much power to his photots. His lighting and contrast between light and darks always seem spot on and really complete the photo.

What first caught my attention was his fashion photography.

From what I have seen, a model is never posed the same way, and each time, the pose they're in captures the beauty and details of the clothes they're wearing. He captures the movement the clothes make as the model is falling, jumping, running or spinning, but he also has very still photos where a model is simply standing or in a weird stance. But either way, it always adds life to the clothes. One of his most famous photos is a picture of a woman in a white dress with black gloves and two elephants beside her. Somehow, he still makes her the main focus of the piece, which amazes me. Like his fashion photos, he also gets action shots of dancers.

This section of his photography is usually of a dancer leaping into the air or tells some type of story, whether there is one person or multiple people in a single shot. His photos are perfectly timed to where there is no blur and it looks as if the dancer is frozen in the air. He seems to always tell a story with his pictures. For example, there is one picture where a man in white is leaping into the air holding a hat with an excited expression, while the woman in black looks up at him with an annoyed expression. It can be interpreted in many ways, and that's the beauty of Avedon's work.

Another subsection in Avedon's photography is American West. He wanted to focus on the working class of America, like farmers and housewives. This features so many interesting and different looking people (sometimes deformed), from children to teens to adults, in the form of portraits. Some of them even seem to be family photos. And, like his other work, these pictures are in black and white. They all are so interesting to me, but one stands out the most. It's a photo of a bald man covered in bees. There is something intriguing about it along with other photos in the collection.

He's also created a book that was published in 1970 called the "Portraits of Power" that contains figures of political power such as Karl Rove and Ronald Reagan. There is even a photo of our now President Obama in 2004, the year Avedon passed away.

As you can see, Richard Avedon has had a full and successful career. He's showed so many sides of himself from so many different view points. To me, he is an inspiration and why he is my favorite photographer.

#Vacation