He is also distinguished by his large prints, sometimes measuring over three feet in height. As his reputation as a photographer became widely known, he brought in many famous faces to his studio and photographed them with a large-format 8x10 view camera. Among the many other rock bands photographed by Avedon, in 1973 he shot Electric Light Orchestra with all the members exposing their bellybuttons for recording, On the Third Day.Īvedon was always interested in how portraiture captures the personality and soul of its subject. During this period Avedon also created two famous sets of portraits of The Beatles. In addition to his continuing fashion work, Avedon began to branch out and photographed patients of mental hospitals, the Civil Rights Movement in 1963, protesters of the Vietnam War, and later the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1966, Avedon left Harper's Bazaar to work as a staff photographer for Vogue magazine. Instead, Avedon showed models full of emotion, smiling, laughing, and, many times, in action. Avedon did not conform to the standard technique of taking fashion photographs, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camera. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar. In 1946, Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and Life. Lillian Bassman also promoted Avedon's career at Harper's. In 1944, he began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly discovered by Alexey Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. He started as a photographer for the Merchant Marines in 1942, taking identification pictures of the crewmen with his Rolleiflex camera given to him by his father as a going-away present.

Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish-Russian family.

Richard avedon american west portraits