How Avedon invented a new flavour of glamour in images

He photographed them all: from Tina Turner, to Coco Chanel and Andy Warhol. But there’s photographing another person, and then there’s capturing a moment Richard Avedon’s mastery of the latter observed him grow to be one of the defining photographers of an period. 

Now, a wave of exhibitions (which includes ‘Avedon 100’ at the Gagosian) is marking what would have been Avedon’s 100th birthday. For ‘Avedon: Glamorous’, Hamiltons gallery in London has collaborated closely with The Avedon Foundation to curate an exhibition celebrating the electrical power of the artist’s potential to draw out the human emotion and individual mannerisms of his topics and imbue his pictures with resplendent glamour. 

Given that he to start with picked up a camera aged 12, Avedon engaged with photography in numerous guises. All through the 2nd Planet War, he was tasked with having identification photographs (‘I should have taken photographs of just one hundred thousand faces right before it happened to me I was starting to be a photographer,’ he reported). Avedon then studied less than art director Alexey Brodovitch (then at Harper’s Bazaar) at the Style Laboratory of the New Faculty for Social Investigation. He began working as a freelance photographer, mostly for Harper’s Bazaar. In the beginning denied a studio by the magazine, he was compelled to get ingenious, photographing types and looks in extra obscure destinations, this kind of as the streets, in nightclubs, on the seaside. 

This instilled in Avedon a zest for carving out his own tactic as a great art photographer, which led him to be integrated in early solo displays at major establishments at The Smithsonian (1962) and the Minneapolis Institute of Fantastic Artwork (1970). He then became the 1st living photographer to be honoured with a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1978, adopted by a retrospective in 2002. 

‘We stay in a time the place modern day tradition is even a lot more obsessed and fixated on movie star, natural beauty, wealth and fame. Avedon documented this and so much far more in his many years-very long career with a digital camera,’ clarifies Tim Jefferies, principal of Hamiltons gallery. ‘These times our smartphones make us all budding photographers, but the exhibition shines a mild on the talent and experience that is essential to extract the top elements for a certainly fantastic photograph.’

Avedon’s topics were large-ranging, from anonymous sitters to friends activists to superstars. Through all, his perform challenged the status quo, subverted beauty conventions, and, as illustrated in the clearly show at Hamiltons, crammed with wit, charisma and a deep grasp of human psychology. 

‘Avedon: Glamorous’, till 11 August, Hamiltons gallery, London. hamiltonsgallery.com