Richard Avedon

• The collection of 200 photographs and vintage magazines spans Avedon's entire career, from his early street scenes and fashion photos to his celebrity portraits.
  
  Bob Dylan, musician, Central Park, New York, February 10, 1965.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• During his career, Avedon worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Life, The New Yorker and other publications while also pursuing more photojournalistic work, photographing the Civil Rights Movement, protests against the Vietnam War and more.
  
  Marilyn Monroe, actor, New York, May 6, 1957.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• "Beginning in the spring of 1979 I spent the summer months traveling in the West, going to truck stops, stockyards, walking through the crowds at a fair, looking for faces I wanted to photograph... As the work progressed, the portraits themselves began to reveal connections of all kinds - psychological, sociological, physical, familial - among people who had never met." -Richard Avedon
  
  Boyd Fortin, thirteen year old rattlesnake skinner, Sweetwater, Texas, March 10, 1979
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• "I don't think pictures have to justify their existence by calling themselves works of art or photographic portraits. They are memories of a man; they are contradictory facets of an instant of his life as a subject - and of our lives as viewers." -Richard Avedon
  
  Janis Joplin, singer, Port Arthur, Texas, August 28, 1969.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• "I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the "yes." I have a white
  background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us." -Richard Avedon, 1994
  
  Marian Anderson, contralto, New York, June 30, 1955.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• "When the sitting is over, I feel kind of embarrassed about what we've shared. It's so intense. Snapshots that have been taken of me working show something I was not aware of at all, that over and over again I'm holding my own body or my own hands exactly like the person I'm photographing. I never knew I did that, and obviously what I'm doing is trying to feel, actually physically feel, the way he or she feels at the moment I'm photographing them in order to deepen the sense of connection." -Richard Avedon, 1985
  
  Richard Avedon with Twiggy, Paris studio, April 1967.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• "My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues." -Richard Avedon, 1980
  
  Charles Chaplin leaving America, New York, September 13, 1952.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• "These disciplines, these strategies, this silent theater, attempt to achieve an illusion: that everything embodied in the photograph simply happened, that the person in the portrait was always there, was never told to stand there, was never encouraged to hide his hands, and in the end was not even in the presence of a photographer." - Richard Avedon
  
  Cesar Chavez, founder, United Farm Workers Union, Keene, California, June 27, 1976.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• "I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are."" -Richard Avedon
  
  Björk, musician, New York, June 2, 2004.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation

• ""Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is... the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own." -Richard Avedon
  
  Willem de Kooning, painter, Springs, Long Island, New York, August 18, 1969.
  
  
  

  Courtsey The Richard Avedon Foundation