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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.

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
Way
Men
Wheelchair
People
Wheelchairs
Photographing
Terrific
Window
Outside
Tree

More quotes by Richard Avedon

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My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.
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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.
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To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.
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I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.
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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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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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I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.
Richard Avedon
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He sleeps fastest who sleeps alone.
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Faces are the ledgers of our experience.
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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 think charm is the ability to be truly interested in other people
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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 always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment
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A portrait isn't a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.
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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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One man's fantasy is another man's job.
Richard Avedon
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Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.
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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Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.
Richard Avedon