Richard Avedon

When he died at 81, while on assignment in 2004, Richard Avedon was as famous and beautiful as any of his photographs. “You’ve got to ask yourself, How could one man be the author of so many of the iconic images of the twentieth century?“ says David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, where the photographer worked for nearly sixty years. “We remember his Marilyn, his Ezra Pound, his Bert Lahr, his practically everyone.… Avedon’s enthusiasm was so winning and so seductive that he got people to do everything.“ Avedon was a nearsighted high school dropout from the Bronx whose crew cut soon grew into a smooth, silvery mane and whose black frames became a trademark, protecting the ever peering eyes that never lost contact with their subject—he stood left of his camera, never behind it. “And if he ever blinked,“ adds Remnick, “I missed it.“

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