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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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Richard Avedon
Age: 81 †
Born: 1923
Born: May 15
Died: 2004
Died: October 1
Designer
Fashion Photographer
Photographer
New York City
New York
Part
Fiction
Discovered
Persons
Willing
Photographer
Person
Upon
Complete
Take
Sense
Picture
Must
Else
Subject
Portrait
Another
Photography
Portraits
Cannot
Subjects
Imagined
Someone
Depends
Possibly

More quotes by 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 am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.
Richard Avedon
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Faces are the ledgers of our experience.
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My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.
Richard Avedon
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He sleeps fastest who sleeps alone.
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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I see pictures of myself and I always knew that what I was feeling didn't look like that guy in the pictures.
Richard Avedon
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All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
Richard Avedon
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People — running from unhappiness, hiding in power — are locked within their reputations, ambitions, beliefs.
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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If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.
Richard Avedon
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i think charm is the ability to be truly interested in other people
Richard Avedon
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Anything is an art if you do it at the level of an art.
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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Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.
Richard Avedon
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The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.
Richard Avedon
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To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.
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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Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.
Richard Avedon