Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon

"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."

http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/biographies/richard-avedon-biography


Richard Avedon has photographed portraits of a wide range of people ranging from famous models, actors, philosophers and everyday public. 
His photographs very much remind me of those of Steve Pyke's in the sense that he aimed to capture the important people of the 20th century. 
Like mentioned in the video above, Richard Avedon has always through this career stuck to the same style of portraits, sharp, black and white images with a white backdrop, very much like the way Steve Pyke always sticks to his individual style no matter whom he is shooting images of. 
Both photographers aim to capture the intense detail of peoples features. 

























I personally feel the quote above by Richard Avedon is something so important to pick up on, especially as an aspiring portrait photographer. When other do people create these expressions? The expressions and reactions people give when stood behind a camera are completely unique to photography. 



The American West:











These are images Avedon has taken of ordinary people, in one of his set up outside studios. As the image at the top of this blog shows he simply used a white backdrop on a wall outdoors, with his camera on a tripod using natural lighting. I think this is an amazing technique in order to find interesting people who appear to have a lot of character to photograph. 
Much like in my previous street photography prooject, i found that the most interesting images id captured of people where those in which the person was a 'character'. They'd be an interesting character to look at. 


Fashion and the famous:
















Something I find really attractive about this particular image is the way in which Avedon has created this sharpness around the subjects face, in contrast with softness around her hair, shoulders, arms and rest of her body. The fact Marilyn Monroe was seen as possibly the most beautiful woman to live at this time, it is cleverly played on by this emphasis on her face.




Although this is more of what id class as a high fashion photograph as appose to a standard portrait, I found it interesting to find out while researching, that in fashion shoots, Avedon wanted to experiment with capturing movement, to go against the typical emotionless, still, almost Manichean like fashion poses in all other fashion shoots.




The hard shadows on the face here emphasizing the models strong features is a technique cleverly used, something that shows the photographer knows how to work with studio lighting to capture the perfect portrait. Id really love to gain enough experience to be able recreate such a strong successful photo like this.

http://www.tumblr.com/search/richard+avedon

Again, all of the images produced by this photographer make me want to experiment with black and white portraiture. Beyond this project id like to experiment with capturing portrait photographs on black and white film as appose to digital.