Richard Avedon: Photographer of Influence, on view from May 21, 2011 through September 4, 2011, showcases more than 50 photographs by the legendary artist. The exhibition celebrates Avedon’s storied career in which he straddled the worlds of the magazine and museum, pioneering a vision of photography as a two-sided mirror that reflects both the subject and the photographer. Richard Avedon: Photographer of Influence was organized by the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona with the cooperation of The Richard Avedon Foundation, New York. The installation of the exhibition at Nassau County Museum of Art will include a presentation of fashion and photography in film.
Richard Avedon (1923-2000) was one of the great image-makers of the 20th century. He revolutionized fashion photography through his imaginative portrayals of beautiful women wearing extraordinary clothes in irresistible settings. Working with the era’s leading models, he transformed how haute couture fashion was depicted by shooting his models in elegant, sophisticated surroundings. Avedon introduced a new emotional complexity to fashion photography, one that suggested plot through the model’s expressive gestures. His iconic images in Harper’s BAZAAR and Vogue showed the public a new American woman—one with wit, individuality and glamour.
Avedon created and defined the role of the high-profile portrait and fashion photographer. Through the 1957 film Funny Face, in which Fred Astaire plays an Avedon-inspired fashion photographer, Avedon became inextricably linked to the glamour of Paris. In this film, Audrey Hepburn portrays a naïve young American transformed into an exquisite creature of French high fashion. The museum is showing Funny Face on Saturday, June 4. This outdoor screening at sundown is an event of the Gold Coast Film Festival.
Shifting toward creating evocative portraits, Avedon produced powerful, emotional images by focusing on the posture, expression and gestures of his subjects. These subjects included artists, politicians, writers, intellectuals and other influential figures of the day. The exhibition at Nassau County Museum of Art incorporates several of his most noted portraits of stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Writing of portrait photography in In the American West: Photographs, 1979-1984, Avedon explained: “A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”
