Avedon, Richard

I've always been aware of a relationship between madness and beauty.

An amazing photographer, mostly credited for defining America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century.
I came across some of his quotes about his childhood, and work and was totally enamored by the charisma they held. When talking about his work, he says:

Everything I do, it seems to me, has passion about it and then suddenly the drop and then withdrawal, which is not necessarily depression. It can be planes or sleep or doing puzzles, but I have to pull back. I am not capable of living on my most intense level for a long period of time. I think I might crack. That’s probably why I still do a bit of fashion photography — to relieve the tension.

Avedon got his first camera, a Brownie, when he was young, about 8 or 10 years old. He says that his first model was his younger sister, who was six years old at the time. He took pictures of her, then taped the negatives (which were 2.25 inch format) onto his body and went to the beach. At the end of the day his sister was tanned onto his body...His sister's beauty and her tragic death has also been a talk in the media quite often. He talks about her with so much love;

"Her beauty was the event of our family and the destruction of her life"

His sister was known for her beauty. She died in a mental institution at the age of 40, isolated by her beauty.



He died at the age of 81, when he suffered a brain hemorrhage. Many may be familiar with his simple black & white on white style from his shots for the New Yorker, he was their first ever photographer.