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I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.

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
Ideas
Always
Never
People
Stimulated
Photographer
Almost

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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.
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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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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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One man's fantasy is another man's job.
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Anything is an art if you do it at the level of an art.
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He sleeps fastest who sleeps alone.
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People — running from unhappiness, hiding in power — are locked within their reputations, ambitions, beliefs.
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All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
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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
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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.
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If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.
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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.
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Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.
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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.
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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.
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Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.
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Faces are the ledgers of our experience.
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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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I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.
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I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment
Richard Avedon