Photography Collection

Richard Avedon, Sandra Bennett, 12 years, Rocky Ford, Colorado, 1980, from the series In the American West

The exhibition
This exhibition is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work since his death in 2004. After the Louisiana Museum (24 August 2007 to 13 January 2008), it is being presented this summer at the Jeu de Paume Concorde, where it will occupy the entire space. The exhibition brings together 270 works spanning Richard Avedon’s career from 1946 to 2004. There are of course fashion photographs, but above all there are photographs of figures from the worlds of politics, literature, the arts and show business. In Paris, at the initiative of Marta Gili, director of the Jeu de Paume, this selection will be enriched by some forty large-format prints from In the American West, the series produced by Avedon from 1979 to 1984. A book will accompany the exhibition. French edition: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark / éditions du Jeu de Paume, Paris.

Fashion photographer
Richard Avedon started working for Harper’s Bazaar in 1945. He joined Vogue in 1966. His pictures metamorphosed fashion photography, which he found too static and stuffy, by emphasising movement and capturing his models in public spaces such as parks nightclubs and shops. Avedon set out to recreate everyday and social situations, and to give the impression that, as in photojournalism, his photographs were taken spontaneously, on the spur of the moment. After the Second World War the supremacy of New York meant that its fashion photographers were sent over to Paris to photograph the European collections. Avedon regularly photographed the designs of the major Parisian couture houses through to 1984. In the 1960s Avedon went back to the studio and the neutral background in order highlight the beauty and mobility of his subjects.

Portraitist
In parallel to his fashion photographs, Richard Avedon made numerous portraits, radically transforming the codes of genre, as did that other great American photographer, Irving Penn. But Avedon went even further than Penn. He shattered the iconic images of the stars of show business, literature, the arts and the political elite in the United States. His portraits show all the facets of his models’ personality, however great their mastery of the codes of representation. The use of white grounds, the bareness of the compositions, helped to bring a searching psychological dimension to each subject. Generally speaking, Avedon sought to capture the true nature of things rather than to reproduce them superficially. During his photography sessions, he sought out that very special moment when he could capture and set down the psychological intensity emanating from the sitter. For, to photograph someone “meant looking beyond the charm of the face and establishing a relation between the vital presence of the other and his own, that is to say, finding the moment when everything converged and happened.” (Marta Gili, in her preface to the catalogue)

In the American West
“(…) In the American West was the result of a commission from the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth, in Texas. From 1979 to 1984, Avedon photographed men and women in the American West, most of them working folk. In the process, he travelled across several states of the Great Plains and the Rockies, paying special attention to specific sites and events such as ranches, coalmines, cattle fairs, oil wells, slaughterhouses, truck stops, modest diners and offices. He photographed the homeless, housewives, cowboys, miners, prisoners and rodeo riders. His strategy was to build up a network of portraits, weaving a series of psychological, sociological, physical and familial connections between these individuals who had never met. All the photos in this series were taken in broad daylight and outdoors, looking for a certain quality of shadow, against a simple white paper backdrop hung on the side of a truck. The uncompromising photographs that resulted caused quite a controversy when they were first shown in Texas because of Avedon’s “demystifying” vision of that Promised Land, the American West, that land of pioneers and conquerors.” (Marta Gili, from the preface to the catalogue)

Photojournalist
Richard Avedon put his talent as a photographer at the service of the social causes and political evens that shook American society in the 1960s and 70s. He made several reports on the Civil Rights movements in the South (1963), the Ku Klux Klan, and psychiatric hospitals. A pacifist, he photographed hippies demonstrating against the Vietnam War in 1969, and travelled to the country in 1971 to make portraits of the army leaders and of napalm victims. For the French magazine Égoïste he covered the meeting of East and West Berliners at the Brandenburg Gates on 31 December 1989 and 1 January 1990, less than two months after the fall of the Wall.


Biography

1923
Born, New York City.

1929-41
Attended P.S. 6, De Witt Clinton High School, and Columbia University.

1937-40
Co-editor, with James Baldwin, of The Magpie, De Witt Clinton High School literary magazine.

1942-44
Served in the U.S. Merchant Marines.

1944-50
Studied with Alexey Brodovitch at The Design Laboratory, New School for Social Research, New York City.

1945-65
Staff photographer for Harper’s Bazaar.

1947-84
Photographed the French Collections in Paris.

1949-50
Theatre Arts, editor and photographer.

1950
Art Directors Club, New York, Highest Achievement award.

1957
Visual consultant for the film Funny Face, directed by Stanley Donen, with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, based on Avedon’s career.

1958
Popular Photography magazine, One of the World’s Ten Greatest Photographers.

1959
Publication: OBSERVATIONS, photographs by Richard Avedon, text by Truman Capote, designed by Alexey Brodovitch. Simon and Schuster 1959.

1962
Exhibition: “Richard Avedon”, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D. C.

1963
Photographed the Civil Rights Movement in America.

1964
Publication: NOTHING PERSONAL, photographs by Richard Avedon, text by James Baldwin, design by Marvin Israel. Atheneum 1964.

1966-90
Staff photographer for Vogue.

1967
Conducted Master Class in Photography at the Avedon Studio.

1969
Photographed the Anti-War Movement across America.

1970
Exhibition: “Richard Avedon”, portrait retrospective 1945-1970 at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

1971
Photographed in Vietnam.

1973
Publication: ALICE IN WONDERLAND: THE FORMING OF A COMPANY AND THE MAKING OF A PLAY, photographs by Richard Avedon, text by Doon Arbus, design by Ruth Ansel. E.P. Dutton 1973.

1974
Exhibition: “Jacob Israel Avedon”, portraits of the photographer’s father, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1976
Publication: PORTRAITS, photographs by Richard Avedon, introduction by Harold Rosenberg. Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1976
Publication: "THE FAMILY", Rolling Stone, October 21, special Bicentennial issue, photographed during the 1976 election campaign season.

1978
Exhibition: “Avedon: Photographs 1947-1977”, fashion retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Publication: AVEDON: PHOTOGRAPHS 1947-1977 by Richard Avedon, essay by Harold Brodkey. Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1978.

1980
Exhibition: “Avedon: 1946-1980”, portraits, fashion, reportage, University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA.

1985
Exhibition: “In the American West”, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
Publication: IN THE AMERICAN WEST 1979-1984, photographs by Richard Avedon. Began working for the French publication Egoïste. American Society of Magazine Photographers, Photographer of the Year.

1989 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), Lifetime Achievement Award.
Royal College of Art, London, Honorary Doctorate.

1991
Installation “Brandenburg Gate, East Berlin, New Year’s Eve, December 31,1989 - January 1, 1990” at the Carnegie International 1991, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation International Photography Prize.

1992
First staff photographer for The New Yorker.

1993
International Center of Photography Master of Photography Award.
Kenyon College, Ohio, Honorary Doctorate.
Publication: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY RICHARD AVEDON, photographs by Richard Avedon, design by Mary Shanaham. Random House 1993.

1994
Exhibition and exhibition catalogue: “Richard Avedon Evidence 1944-1994”, retrospective, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Parsons School of Design, New York, Honorary Doctorate.
EVIDENCE is awarded the Prix Nadar by the Bibliotheque Nationale for the best photographic book of 1994.
Publication: EVIDENCE: 1944-1994, photographs by Richard Avedon with essays by Jane Livingston and Adam Gropnik, design by Mary Shanaham. Random House 1994.

1995
American Masters Documentary, “Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light”, produced for PBS, directed by Helen Whitney for PBS 1995.

1998
The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

1999
Publication: AVEDON THE SIXTIES, Richard Avedon and Doon Arbus, design by Ruth Ansel and Gregory Wakabayashi. Random House 1999.
Exhibition “Richard Avedon Early Portraits”, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

2000
Exhibition “About Faces”, including Richard Avedon portraiture, Fraenkel Gallery San Francisco. Deutsches Centrum für Photographie, Berlin Photography Prize 2000.

2001
Exhibition “Richard Avedon: Made in France”, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
Publication: RICHARD AVEDON: MADE IN FRANCE, essay by Judith Thurman, design by Mary Shanahan and Gregory Wakabayashi, Fraenkel Gallery, 2001.

2002
Exhibition: “Richard Avedon Portraits”, portrait retrospective, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, curated by Maria Morris Hambourg & Mia Fineman.
Publication: RICHARD AVEDON PORTRAITS, photographs by Richard Avedon, essay by Maria Morris Hambourg and Mia Fineman, essay by Richard Avedon, foreword by Philippe de Montebello, design by Mary Shanahan. MMA and Harry Abrams 2002.

2003
Exhibition: “Richard Avedon”, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
Arts & Business Council, Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Visual Arts.
Americans for the Arts, National Arts Award: Lifetime Achievement.

2004
Dies, 1 October, San Antonio, Texas, while on assignment for The New Yorker.

2005
The Richard Avedon Foundation established.
Publication: WOMAN IN THE MIRROR, photographs by Richard Avedon with an essay by Anne Hollander, design by Mary Shanahan. Harry Abrams 2005.


Richard Avedon. Photographs 1946 – 2004
– 28 September 2008

Site Concorde
Jeu de Paume
1, place de la Concorde
75008 Paris
métro Concorde
bus : 24, 42, 72, 73, 84, 94
information: 01 47 03 12 50

Access through the Tuileries gardens, steps up from Rue de Rivoli.
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