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I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment

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
Studio
Studios
Prefer
Environment
Work
Always
People
Isolates

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.
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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.
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I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.
Richard Avedon
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Anything is an art if you do it at the level of an art.
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A portrait isn't a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.
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My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.
Richard Avedon
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I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.
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.
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A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed
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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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The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.
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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.
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To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.
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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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Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.
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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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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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