What we can learn from the iconic Richard Avedon

I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor  or a forture teller--to find out how they are. So they’re dependent on me.  I have to engage them. Otherwise there’s nothing to photograph.  The concentration has to come from me and involve them. Sometimes the force of it grows  so strong that sounds in the studio go unheard. Time stops. We share a brief, intense intimacy. But it’s unearned. It has no past...no future. And when the sitting is over —when the picture is done—there’s nothing left except the photograph... the photograph and a kind of embarrassment. They leave..and I don’t know them.  I’ve hardly heard what they’ve said. If I meet them a week later in a room somewhere,  I expect they won’t recognize me. Because I don’t feel I was really there.  At least the part of me that was is now in the photograph.  And the photographs have a reality for me that the people don’t.  It’s through the photographs that I know them. - Richard Avedon

I am only stimulated by people, never by ideas, almost never.  It is always an emotional response. It is always an emotional response. It is always between  myself and myself and another person – this is what it boils dwon to.  I am not interested in the technique of photography or of camera.  I am not interested in light. What I want is light in which the subject is free to move  in any way without falling into an ugly light. So that I can get to them,  to the expression they make, so that they are free to do or express  something which is the way I feel. The camera is most in the way.  If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.  Then when I get it on paper, on the negative, if there was something in the eyes  when I took the picture, then when I look at the print, there are things  that I can do to emphasize that. But when I’m used to an approach, it becomes like a person that I have no response to.  The approach to the print is like the approach to the sitter.  Certain qualities in the print say what I mean. I hate photographs, most photographs.  I cannot take a picture of something I have not known and experienced myself,  because I do not know what is going on.  The photograph is not reportage. I do not believe that something reports  itself in a photograph. It is redrawn; it is something I am saying.  - Richard Avedon, The Best of Popular Photography  by Harvey V. Fondiller , ISBN: 0871650371 , Page: 9 Yesterday ,I had the opportunity to watch a documentary on Richard Avedon  in my photography class. I have heard much about the iconic Richard Avedon- We all are familiar with his famous photographs in Harper's Bazzar, Vogue.  I had not followed him closely. After watching the documentary and live interviews with him  and those he photograghed, a sensitive, gifted,thouhgtful  and truthful man emerged, someone I would have liked to have met , if I could have during his lifetime. He had an interactive style  that  disarmed  and something about the human personal dilemma became palpable in his presence..  I think I passed  over his work,from a superficial, inattentive, biased  perspective.  I regret  that I did not appreciate the humanity in his large body  of  effortful ,dedicated and intense work until now..  I was especiallly moved by the photos of his father's last years of life.  Avedon had photographed many famous people, but not his father  because of misunderstandings between them. He could not share  with his father what was  the best of himself and in some ways  he had received through his father.There are those who criticized the work  as a sesationalism of his father's death and suffering with cancer..  So far from the truth that seems to me. I believe Avedon was trying to show us something  about the dignity  of an undignified situation in suffering and in dying.   Avedon talked about the artist's position  that does not  show beauty for beauty's sake,  but presents us with experiences that make us think  and even rattle us up ,cause us to feel. I think he was struggling to understand his father  and through his careful attention and compassion be known to his father. It is challenging at times between parents and children to be recognized for  we who are and that we may  be a mirror or reaction to what a parent imparted upon us. A parent may not even recognize or possibly deny the many ways  that they have influenced their child.  I think the photos of his father's dying are an attempt to shed light on  the complexity that exists between a father and  son,  that sometimes may never really resolve,  but it is to be respected and acknowledged.. Richard Avedon photographed his father for 7 years as he declined in cancer. Now, both he and his father are dead.   These photographs document our basic need to chronicle our lives,  and the most important relationships  for  as  imperfect as they are ,they are who we are.  I applaud Richard  for his unflappable integrity and compassionate intense approach to humanity.