Avedon’s work will be remembered forever…

Richard Avedon from Lucie Foundation on Vimeo.

His last project

In 2004 Richard Avedon launched a project called Democracy  for the American presidential elections that consisted in taking portraits, all over the States of politicians and people representing this event.

He also photographed senator Barrack Obama and decided to place that portait as the last photograph of the project. I am amazed at the insight Avedon had, not knowing that Obama would become President of the United States of America in 2008.

Plans had been made to shoot more photographs but Richard Avedon suffered of a brain hemorage while staying in San Antonio, Texas and died on October 1, 2004.

Avedon continued working, getting projects from the New Yorker, where he was the only staff photographer, to fashion and independent projects. 

He was always involved in conflicts and politics. He photographed the civil rights movement in the south of the United states, the anti-war movement in 1969 and went to Vietnam around that time. 

He made a book called The Kennedys: portrait of a Family which include these photographs:

Portraits of power was made in 2008 and it gathers all the portraits avedon has made of political figures.

His personnal life

An interview with Richard Avedon at Charlie Rose. November 26, 1999.

In this interview, Avedon is asked if he has any regrets in his life. He answers to that: ‘There is something I didn’t do successfully and that’s my family life’.

I think Avedon lived in his work and it helped him cope with life. When taking portraits, Avedon saw himself and he confirms that ‘[m]y portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph’.

For example, the way he faced the death of his dying father was to photograph him. His father fought a cancer for seven years, during which Richard photographed him until he died in 1973.

 I found that his personal life is very discrete and unheard of. But while researching, I found out that his sister lived almost her whole life, from adolescence, in a mental institute. Avedon said, about his sister’s condition that ‘I’ve blocked a lot of this out’.

Even thow he got married twice and had a son, his life was all about his work. When he spoke about his second wife, Evelyn Franklin he stated that ‘Evelyn and I came together to have a child, a life together but what’s happened is that I’m married to my work’.