Quote

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
Must
Else
Subject
Portrait
Another
Photography
Portraits
Cannot
Subjects
Imagined
Someone
Depends
Possibly
Part
Fiction
Discovered
Persons
Willing
Photographer
Person
Upon
Complete
Take
Sense
Picture

More quotes by Richard Avedon

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I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.
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I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people.
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All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
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You can't get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surface. All that you can do is manipulate that surface - gesture, costume, expression - radically and correctly.
Richard Avedon
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One man's fantasy is another man's job.
Richard Avedon
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I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.
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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A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed
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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He sleeps fastest who sleeps alone.
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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Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is...the human predicament only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.
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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Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.
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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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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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
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Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.
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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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