2024-02-01 17:29:28
Photographer Richard Avedon at the inauguration of his exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 1996. © Marcello Mencarini/Bridgeman Images
PORTRAIT – The Gagosian gallery, in Paris, is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the photographer who died in 2004. From the chicest of fashion to the rawest of death.
Richard Avedon would have been 100 years old on May 15, 2023. A century, which means another world! He died at work of an attack at the age of 81 in 2004, during a final report on the presidential campaign in Texas for the prestigious magazine The New Yorker . And this double anniversary fits poorly with the image of this bouncing photographer, eternally young, whose images, dazzling like revelations, go far beyond the sphere of fashion. Vivid glamor on glossy paper, these photos, which deify the elegance and sophistication of the couture worn as a vestal by Jacqueline de Ribes, do not reveal her harsh New York childhood.
Son of a Russian Jewish immigrant, Jacob Israel Avedon, he made moving portraits of this severe father, a model of a “self-made man” and stubborn integration, when cancer emaciated his face to the point of bones of the cheekbones, widening his pale, faded gaze. In seven images, he made it the very embodiment of melancholy and destiny. Sensitivity…
This article is reserved for subscribers. You have 90% left to discover.
Do you want to read more?
Unlock all items immediately.
Already subscribed? Log in
#Photographer #dazzling #portraits #Richard #Avedon #exhibits #Paris