Richard Avedon (1923-2004) is one of the rare photographers referred to by surname alone. In a career spanning 60 years, his direct and uncompromising eye recorded everything from the US Civil Rights movement and Vietnam to the haute couture of Dior and Versace.
Yet his advertising photography is less well known. The new book Avedon Advertising (Abrams), designed by Graphic Thought Facility and printed by VeronaLibri on Symbol Matt Plus, features six chapters that correspond to key phases in Avedon’s advertising work. Edited by the Richard Avedon Foundation’s directors – the photographer’s daughter-in-law Laura Avedon and James Martin – the book includes detailed reflections on Avedon’s advertising legacy.
For readers more familiar with Avedon’s portraits, the scope and volume of his advertising work may come as a surprise. Much early work has been lost, but enough has survived to demonstrate the broad arc of his advertising collaborations. As he developed as a craftsman, Avedon’s work mapped the landscape of advertising and US society throughout the second half of the twentieth century.
Advertising work was not a phase: Avedon took commissions every year between 1944 and 2004. Creatively, he got to test out new techniques. Commercially, he used the income to fund his personal projects, which in themselves yielded little if any income. Advertising work also allowed him to produce other works. His work for DuPont, from 1962-64, helped him finance his 1964 civil rights book Nothing Personal, co-authored with long-time friend James Baldwin.
Certain work is striking. Two pieces, 50 years apart, illustrate Avedon’s remarkable facility with his sitters. His 1947 portrait of Wendy Burden for luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman has the direct and connected gaze Avedon thought so crucial. And his portrait of Kate Moss for Calvin Klein’s fragrance cK be, taken in 1996, shares that same wonderfully unaffected sense of the moment.
When clients let Avedon be Avedon, the work works. He was hard-working and reliable, and sometimes models signed contracts with the proviso that Avedon was the photographer. Spanning six decades, the work takes interesting paths. Alongside fabulously daft fashion editorials for Dior and Harper’s Bazaar are dynamic monochrome campaign images for dancewear company Danskin. As his reputation grew, his influence broadened beyond the camera. His central role in the building of the Versace brand, well covered in his 1998 photobook The Naked & The Dressed, is briefly described here. Working with Gianni Versace from the founding of the label, Avedon helped establish a visual language for a fashion house that has rarely been matched. Few other fashion brands have been founded on such a consistently creative relationship.
There is one particularly powerful image, at first glance unrelated to the commissioned advertising: a portrait of his younger sister, Louise Avedon, taken in 1945. It is one of the very few images that suggest Avedon’s early search for a distinct visual signature. Avedon’s lens looks upward to Louise, her back to the camera. She looks over her shoulder as the breeze catches her coat. In it are themes which re-occur time and time again in the strongest work: a moment of unforced connection, a striking composition of garment and gaze. It is as close as we get to something like a glimpse at Avedon’s thought process. The book – otherwise featuring almost entirely finished work – is better for its inclusion.