33 Facts About Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer.

Richard Avedon worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Elle specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance.

Richard Avedon's father, Jacob Israel Avedon, was a Russian-born immigrant who advanced from menial work to starting his own successful retail dress business on Fifth Avenue called Avedon's Fifth Avenue.

Richard Avedon's father was a critical and remote disciplinarian, who insisted that physical strength, education, and money prepared one for life.

Richard Avedon attended DeWitt Clinton High School in Bedford Park, Bronx, where from 1937 until 1940 he worked on the school's literary magazine, The Magpie, with James Baldwin.

Richard Avedon then started as a photographer for the Merchant Marines, taking ID shots of the crewmen with the Rolleiflex camera his father had given him.

From 1944 to 1950, Richard Avedon studied photography with Alexey Brodovitch at his Design Laboratory at The New School for Social Research.

In 1944, Richard Avedon began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly endorsed by Alexey Brodovitch, who was art director for the world-renowned American fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar.

In 1946, Richard Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and Life.

When Diana Vreeland left Harper's Bazaar for Vogue in 1962, Richard Avedon joined her as a staff photographer.

Richard Avedon proceeded to become the lead photographer at Vogue and photographed most of the covers from 1973 until Anna Wintour became editor in chief in late 1988.

Richard Avedon photographed the Calvin Klein Jeans campaign featuring a fifteen-year-old Brooke Shields, as well as directing her in the accompanying television commercials.

Richard Avedon first worked with Shields in 1974 for a Colgate toothpaste ad.

Richard Avedon photographed her for Versace, 12 American Vogue covers and Revlon's Most Unforgettable Women campaign.

Richard Avedon focuses the inarticulate rage people feel about the decline in contemporary morality and destruction of innocence in the world.

Richard Avedon branched out into photographing patients of mental hospitals, the Civil Rights Movement in 1963, protesters of the Vietnam War, and later the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Richard Avedon was always interested in how portraiture captures the personality and soul of its subject.

Richard Avedon's subjects include Buster Keaton, Marian Anderson, Marilyn Monroe, Ezra Pound, Isak Dinesen, Dwight D Eisenhower, Andy Warhol, and the Chicago Seven.

In 1982, Richard Avedon produced a playfully inventive series of advertisements for fashion label Christian Dior, based on the idea of film stills.

Wilder envisioned the project to portray Richard Avedon's take on the American West.

The collection identified a story within his subjects of their innermost self, a connection Richard Avedon admits would not have happened if his new sense of mortality through severe heart conditions and aging hadn't occurred.

Richard Avedon visited and traveled through state fair rodeos, carnivals, coal mines, oil fields, slaughter houses and prisons to find subjects.

In 1994, Richard Avedon revisited his subjects who would later speak about In the American West aftermath and its direct effects.

Richard Avedon was a depressed, disconnected and lonely man before Avedon offered him the chance to be photographed.

When he saw his portrait for the first time, Mudd saw that Richard Avedon revealed something about him that allowed him to recognize the need for change in his life.

Richard Avedon's book was actually controversial when it was first released.

Richard Avedon had very numerous museum exhibitions around the world, exhibitions in which he was a part of and became known for.

In 1944, Richard Avedon married 19-year-old bank teller Dorcas Marie Nowell, who later became the model and actress Doe Richard Avedon; they did not have children and divorced in 1949.

The couple summered at the gay village of Cherry Grove, Fire Island, and Richard Avedon's bisexuality has been attested to by colleagues and family.

In 1970, Richard Avedon purchased a former carriage house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that would serve as both his studio and apartment.

On October 1,2004, Richard Avedon died in a San Antonio, Texas, hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Richard Avedon was in San Antonio shooting an assignment for The New Yorker.

The Richard Avedon Foundation is a private operating foundation, structured by Avedon during his lifetime.