Quote

Faces are the ledgers of our experience.

Richard Avedon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Avedon
Age: 81 †
Born: 1923
Born: May 15
Died: 2004
Died: October 1
Designer
Fashion Photographer
Photographer
New York City
New York
Faces
Experience

More quotes by Richard Avedon

Image
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.
Richard Avedon
Image
All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
Richard Avedon
Image
A portrait isn't a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.
Richard Avedon
Image
I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment
Richard Avedon
Image
He sleeps fastest who sleeps alone.
Richard Avedon
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.
Richard Avedon
Image
If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.
Richard Avedon
Image
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
Image
Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.
Richard Avedon
Image
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
Image
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
Image
One man's fantasy is another man's job.
Richard Avedon
Image
Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.
Richard Avedon
Image
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
Image
I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.
Richard Avedon
Image
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