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My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

Richard Avedon

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Richard Avedon
Age: 81 †
Born: 1923
Born: May 15
Died: 2004
Died: October 1
Designer
Fashion Photographer
Photographer
New York City
New York
Portraits
Photographer
Cameras
Photograph
Photography
People
Snapshots

More quotes by Richard Avedon

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All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
Richard Avedon
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The way someone who's being photographed presents himself to the camera, and the effect of the photographer's response on that presence, is what the making of a portrait is all about.
Richard Avedon
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Faces are the ledgers of our experience.
Richard Avedon
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How many pictures have you torn up because you hate them? What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people.
Richard Avedon
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A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed
Richard Avedon
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My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.
Richard Avedon
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I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the yes. I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us.
Richard Avedon
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One man's fantasy is another man's job.
Richard Avedon
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I've photographed just about everyone in the world. But what I hope to do is photograph people of accomplishment, not celebrity, and help define the difference once again.
Richard Avedon
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Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.
Richard Avedon
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If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.
Richard Avedon
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The pictures have a reality for me that the people don't. It is through the photographs that I know them.
Richard Avedon
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A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about.
Richard Avedon
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We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be.--PERFORMANCE
Richard Avedon
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He sleeps fastest who sleeps alone.
Richard Avedon
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Real people move, they bear with them the element of time. It is this fourth dimension of people that I try to capture in a photograph.
Richard Avedon
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I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment
Richard Avedon
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A portrait isn't a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.
Richard Avedon
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Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.
Richard Avedon
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I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.
Richard Avedon