Quotes by Richard Avedon - Page 2

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 / Photographer
Essentials
Photography
Wake Up
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I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Doctors
People
Photography
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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 / Photographer
Expression
Gestures
Real
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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 / Photographer
Light
Narrative
White
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A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks. He's implicated in what's happening, and he has a certain real power over the result.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Photography
Portraits
Real
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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 / Photographer
Men
Adorable
Children
Family Man
Good Family
Hate
Torn
Family Good Man
Album
Minute
Pictures
Screaming
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I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Forever
Height
Records
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When I was a boy, my family took great care with our snapshots. We really planned them. We made compositions. We posed in front of expensive cars, homes, that werent ours. We borrowed dogs. Almost every family picture taken of us when I was young had a different borrowed dog in it.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Home
Dog
Taken
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Click! In other words, I'm in a very controlling position, and I can bring... and I've already... if the camera's on you, your face is very concentrated. You're listening. You don't know what I'm going to say next, and now you're smiling. All these things are the things I work with.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Work Face Your
Click
Concentrated
Controlling
In Other Words
Smiling
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Camera lies all the time. It’s all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you… the moment you’ve made a choice, you’re lying about something larger. Lying is an ugly word. I don’t mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Lying
Mean
Writing
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Camera lies all the time. It's all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you... the moment you've made a choice, you're lying about something larger. 'Lying' is an ugly word. I don't mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Artist
Lying
Made
Mean
Paint
Picks
Ugly
Because
Any
Does
Same
Write
Camera
Choice
Choose
Say
Lie
Instead
Word
Larger
Moment
Photographers
Something
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There's always been a separation between fashion and what I call my 'deeper' work. Fashion is where I make my living. I'm not knocking it. It's a pleasure to make a living that way. It's pleasure and then there's the deeper pleasure of doing my portraits. It's not important what I consider myself to be, but I consider myself to be a portrait photographer.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Fashion
Important
Way
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I don't really remember the day when I stood behind my camera with Henry Kissinger on the other side. I am sure he doesn't remember it either. But this photograph is here now to prove that no amount of kindness on my part could make this photograph mean exactly what he.. or even I.. wanted it to mean. It's a reminder of the wonder and terror that is a photograph.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Kindness
Mean
Photography
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There was no such person as Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was an invention of hers. A genius invention that she created, like an author creates a character. She understood photography, and she also understood what makes a great photograph. She related to it as if she were giving a performance. She gave more to the still camera than any actress-any woman- I've ever photographed.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Character
Giving
Photography
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Snapshots that have been taken of me working show something I was not aware of at all, that over and over again I'm holding my own body or my own hands exactly like the person I'm photographing. I never knew I did that, and obviously what I'm doing is trying to feel, actually physically feel, the way he or she feels at the moment I'm photographing them in order to deepen the sense of connection.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Hands
Order
Taken
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I hate cameras. They interfere, they’re always in the way. I wish: if I could just work with my eyes alone. To get a satisfactory print, one that contains all that you intended, is very often more difficult and dangerous than the sitting itself. When I’m photographing, I immediately know when I’ve got the image I really want. But to get the image out of the camera and into the open, is another matter.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Eye
Hate
Wish
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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. But whenever I become absorbed in the beauty of a face, in the excellence of a single feature, I feel I've lost what's really there been seduced by someone else's standard of beauty or by the sitter's own idea of the best in him. That's not usually the best. So each sitting becomes a contest.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Excellence
Ideas
Reading
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For hours she danced and sang and flirted and did this thing that's-she did Marilyn Monroe. And then there was the inevitable drop. And when the night was over and the white wine was over and the dancing was over, she sat in the corner like a child, with everything gone. I saw her sitting quietly without expression on her face, and I walked towards her but I wouldn't photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw that she was not saying no.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Children
Night
Wine
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i'm beginning to feel like this. caught the incredible sunshine just in the nick of time today on my walk. the wall of rain approaching from the west desert was pretty spectacular, too. along with being gorgeous, it was sooo muddy. which made driving home in no shoes so very fun :) if only i could post photos here! a picture is worth a thousand words, yes? 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.
Richard Avedon / Photographer
Fun
Photography
Wall
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