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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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Richard Avedon
Age: 81 †
Born: 1923
Born: May 15
Died: 2004
Died: October 1
Designer
Fashion Photographer
Photographer
New York City
New York
Interested
Exquisite
White
Composition
Force
Background
Happens
Backgrounds
Light
Narrative
Compositions
Persons
Photographer
Poses
Person
Series
Seduction
Thing
Worked
Apparent

More quotes by Richard Avedon

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i think charm is the ability to be truly interested in other people
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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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I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.
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My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.
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People — running from unhappiness, hiding in power — are locked within their reputations, ambitions, beliefs.
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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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I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment
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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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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.
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.
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If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.
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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.
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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Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.
Richard Avedon
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He sleeps fastest who sleeps alone.
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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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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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