Made in France

by Richard Avedon

This major new monograph stands as an important rediscovery of a small but central body of work in the career of one of the world's best known and beloved photographers. The Richard Avedon images presented here, many for the first time, were made in Paris for "Harper's Bazaar" during the 1950s. What is particularly special about this presentation is that the images are being reproduced to the exact scale of the engraver's prints made for Avedon by the master printer Andre Gremola, and are uncropped, on their original mounts, with all of the artist's notations on both front and back. Thus, they provide a remarkable portrait of the working methods of one of the most influential fashion photographers in history. This oversized book, measuring 12 x15 inches, is being printed without compromise with tritone plates throughout, and will be a stunning object in its own right. With this body of work, which includes the photographer's iconographic "Dovima with Elephants, Cirque d'Hiver, 1955", Avedon broke radical new ground in the history of photography. He documented the moment in which postwar France was striving through fashion to reclaim its cultural eminence. Judith Thurman, fashion writer for "The New Yorker" contributes the book's introduction. Edition of 100. "And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible."-Richard Avedon "(Avedon) is a passionate artist, always trying to climb inside his image. He gets there, too. It's a self-portrait in the eye of the beholder who is also, and so strenuously, beheld." -Thomas Hess "Here, for instance, is all that I read in an Avedon photograph, the seven gifts it gives first of all, truth, the sensation of truth, the exclamation of truth; then character (pensivity, melancholy, severity, satisfaction, gaiety, etc.); then type (the politician, the writer, the executive); then Eros, a commitment, whether seductive or repulsive, to affect; then death, the corpse's vocation; then too the past, what has been caught, taken, can never come back again, can no longer be touched; lastly. . .lastly the seventh meaning, which is just the one which resists all the rest, the inexpressible supplement, the evidence that, within the image, there is always something the inexhaustible, the intractable element of Photography (desire?)." -Roland Barthes Essay by Judith Thurman. 40 quadratone. 12 x 14.75 in.

Hardcover

Published January 15, 2002

About the author

People note fashion photography and stark portraits of Richard Avedon, an American.

Richard Avedon captured ideals of celebrity and beauty in the 20th and early 21st centuries to helped to establish a contemporary art form. Avedon developed a distinct, iconic style. While his contemporaries focused on single moments or composed formal images, his lighting and minimalist white backdrops drew the viewer to the intimate, emotive power of the expression of the subject.

Richard Avedon studied philosophy at Columbia University, New York, and served in the department of the merchant marines of the United States before studying with Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research.

From 1945, he worked and revolutionized the craft even as he honed his aesthetic to 1965. He worked in magazines from Harper's Bazaar and Vogue to Life and Look. Later, he moved into journalism and the art world. His subjects included pop stars, models, musicians, writers, artists, workers, political activists, soldiers, victims of Vietnam War, politicians, and his family.

Curator Paul Roth observes: “In an Avedon portrait, the face maps an intersection: It is a place where the world outside the photograph meets the world inside the mind.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented solo exhibitions in 1978 and 2002. The Whitney Museum of Art in New York in 1994 mounted major retrospective. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek, Denmark, mounted his works in 2007, and the exhibit traveled to Milan, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and San Francisco through 2009.

Reviews

[Alisha · Rating 2 out of 5]

very cool to see the original requests from client, etc, as well as the magazine spreads the images were in. I LOVED Avedon's quote about being there in paris and how he didn't belong... Gosh, if HE didn't belong, what chance does ANY photographer have!? :O)

It is inspiring to see the old masters, who used film and KNEW their technical. Makes me glad I use film, but makes me realize I need to push myself out of my comfort level in the studio and start mixing it up with my lighting but also to start going on location!

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't have this book, but often drool would come from my mouth when I looked at it at my work. This book is for sure out of print - but any serious fan of fashion photography would kill for this. It's a beautiful production of a book. Oversized with black and white images that jump out at you. It is a combination of rough ( a photographer's notebook of sorts) and the beauty.

[Mills College Library]

779.97469 A948 2001