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RICHARD AVEDON (1923-2004)
Suzy Parker and Robin Tattersall, evening dress by Grès, Moulin Rouge.
Oversized silver print,
17
3
/
4
x14
3
/
4
inches (45.1x37.5 cm.), with Avedon’s signature and edition notation 7/25, in
pencil, and his hand stamp, on verso. 1957; printed 1977
[20,000/30,000]
A classic representation of Avedon’s fashion sensibilities featuring the incomparable Suzy
Parker.
From the Staley-Wise Gallery, NewYork, NewYork; to a Private Collector.
Richard Avedon—affectionately known as ‘Dick’ by friends and family—was a born and bred
NewYorker, whose chance encounter with photography turned into a lifelong passion and
obsession. His father had been a co-owner of a women’s wear department store, and as a
youth, Avedon had admired photographs in
Harper’s Bazaar
,
Vogue
, and
Vanity Fair
, issues of
which his father kept in their home. In 1942, Avedon joined the Merchant Marines, and his
father presented him with a Rolleiflex camera as a going away present, prompting him to
apply for a job in the service’s photography branch.
By 1947,Avedon had impressed Alexey Brodovitch, who was then editor of
Harper’s Bazaar
,
with his singular photographic eye, and started by photographing for
Junior Bazaar
. Avedon
approached fashion subjects with an innovative, intrepid attitude. Where photographs of
women’s fashions had previously been lifeless and limited in appeal, his innovative approach
paid little attention to sharpness, which most commercial photographers sought. In Cathy
Horyn’s 2009 article for the
New York Times
, she wrote, “[Avedon] saw not so much the
fashion in the streets as the cosmopolitan gestures that animated it. Movement entered his
pictures for
Harper’s Bazaar
soon after he arrived there. Storytelling followed.”
In 1958,Winthrop Sargeant wrote a glowing profile of Avedon for
The NewYorker
, in which
he observed:“The Avedon photograph—or, more broadly, the Avedon photographic style—
has by now become a lively contribution to the visual poetry of sophisticated urban life. It
has been imitated by other photographers, but the imitations have seldom approached the
animation of the originals; in any case, as soon as the imitators have mastered at least the
surface elements of one of Avedon’s innovations, he has always popped up with some entirely
new departure, for he has never been one to stand still.” In 1985, Avedon became the
magazine’s first staff photographer, a position he held until his death, in 2004.
Sargeant’s profile on Avedon was written the year following this exquisite and lively photograph
of Suzy Parker, who was then Avedon’s favorite model. Of Avedon’s fashion portraits, he wrote:
“The key toAvedon’s art is to be found not in his technical devices,which he invents and discards
with restless rapidity, but in his preoccupation with the looks,mannerisms, and gestures of human
beings, whom he appears to regard as actors performing in dramas of his own invention.”
This notion of “human beings as actors” is especially evident in the detail of can-can dancers
behind Parker and her handsome date, RobinTattersall.What Sargeant refers to as the “Avedon
blur”—a deliberate, precise impression of the imperfect focus often encountered by novice
photographers—allows for the moment to feel candid, lending levity (and a hint of camp) to
the Moulin Rouge’s dramatic stage light on Parker’s Madame Grès evening dress.